Le Duel

Hermè VS Ladurée @ Sakakini Pacha's place in the 18th district.



In a previous post I mentionned my definitive preference for Ladurée's pastries over the ones of Pierre Hermè, which leaded to a very unhappy comment by Sakakini Pacha, whose blog is now linked in the right column of this blog. Since there are no universal tastes I suggested that we meet to discuss this important topic and so did we today. The plan was to test one pastry from each house but the Pacha cheated and brought MUCH MORE, which was unfair but really nice from him. There was also an assortement of Macarons from both places. We were three people to eat it all. It was impossible.













Technical knock out for two of the three judges after the third sample, the smoked tea did not help in spite of all our efforts.



My conclusion :

- Hermè is Pop and rafinate, very much to the taste of the day, it makes for great pictures and biting in one of his cakes is an experience by itself, the daring mixes of flavours are sometimes stunning, sometimes catastrophic (I won't eat one single white truffle macaron ever again).
- Ladurée is Classic and perfect, almost melancolic, I like the old fashionned boutique and the japanese fans waiting for their "macaron", my opinion is that the cakes are slightly less sweet here and I tend to prefer that.

Personnaly I liked the Rose flavoured chantilly cream for its colour, so pastel it's almost faded and the puffy dought for the crispyness of the last layers.

Sakakini took notes of our considerations but the competition ran out of judges pretty fast, so I don't know if we can draw more general conclusions.

All of the remainings of the tasting went to starving friends craving for chocolate / passion or vanilla macarons.







Pigalle / Montparnasse at Laurent's place for diner with his friends.

Tomorrow : Toulouse, again.

Comments

[rosalie]

i'm a fan of Ladurée's pastries. Hermé makes them beautiful for the eyes but i prefer traditional & simplicity...
i like this contest!!
keep doing it!!

rosalie
( i heart the stars in the last pic -look like delicious ^.^ -)

[Sakakini Pacha]

It wasn't anything of the sort, it was simply gorgeous. Maybe I should mention *I* was the only remaining judge, though, unaffected by the zillions of calories contained in each spoon that found its way into my craving hole (I'm talking mouth, here). While the two other contestants were lying on the sofa in a sorry state of glucidic shock, I kept guzzling down the Azur (a yuzu and chocolate delicacy, not to be confused with the Azure-Te, although just as sweet, though).
Thanks for those lively snapshots of the Pacha's colorful working space.

[Azure-Te]

Oh God. Just revolting. I didn't think it'd be THAT bad... Great pics, though...