Why is Paris still crazy about these 5 Arnaud Larher pastries?
Nearly thirty years after opening his store, pastry chef Arnaud Larher unveils five immutable pastries from his menu, a mix of classic and modern.
Meilleur Ouvrier de France in 2007, Arnaud Larher has been established on rue Caulaincourt in Montmartre for almost thirty years. His creations evolve in small steps, but their soul remains intact. "We adjust, we refine, but the base is there", he confides. Here are five patisseries that tell the story of his career and of his self-confessed greed.
Baba au rhum: mastering power
Arnaud Larher's Baba au Rhum has been in the store for at least fifteen years (after several evolutions), and is unlike any other. For starters, its shape: a ball, designed to guarantee maximum softness. "I wanted it to be as tender as possible", insists the Meilleur Ouvrier de France. The dough is very honeycombed, reminiscent of brioche. But the real signature is elsewhere: rum. Arnaud Larher was one of the first to use top-quality aged rum, in particular a J.M. rum aged in oak barrels in Martinique. "I love rum. I've tasted a lot of it, and I wanted to put it in a pastry to add value." The baba is already soaked when you buy it. Here, the texture is the baba. But "the aromas, the taste, is the rum", insists the pastry chef.
Flan: a daily pleasure
It's perhaps the simplest on the surface, but undoubtedly the most intimate. "I think it's my favorite dessert. I can eat it at 8am, 11am... it's a little moment of happiness every time," says Arnaud Larher. For a long time offered only on Saturdays, the flan is now available on weekdays, in small quantities, as demand was so strong. What makes it special? An ultra-silky, egg-free texture, achieved through very slow cooking. "It thickens slowly, but when you touch it, it melts. There's no resistance, a bit like a cream." While the chef prefers the classic vanilla version, he occasionally gives in to his wife's requests for variations with caramel, chocolate or pistachio.
Toulouse Lautrec: an ode to chocolate
Created almost 28 years ago, this is one of the very first cakes offered by Arnaud Larher in his store. Its name pays tribute to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who lived on rue Caulaincourt. This 100% chocolate dessert features a soft chocolate cookie, a chocolate crème brûlée and a dark chocolate mousse: a play of textures and depths, carried by two types of chocolate for a harmonious marriage. "For those who really love chocolate, it's what we sell the most of. Even at Christmas, in a log version, it remains the best-seller.
L'Ivoire: spontaneity becomes signature
One day, Arnaud Larher expressed a desire to create a fruit cake that he could offer throughout the year. In barely an hour, he created L'Ivoire, with the help of his friend Christophe Michalak. inside, a coconut dacquoise, a white chocolate mousse desugared to the max, a mango-passion compote punctuated with cubes of mango and pineapple, and a twist of lime. Its dome shape is dipped in crisp white chocolate, Magnum-style. "The magic is that you bite into it and it cracks. We put it everywhere, and people love it," laughs the chef. "When we created this dessert, we told ourselves it was fine for now, and that we'd see what we could do with it later. The result is that, thirty years later, we're still selling it," he smiles.
La Tarte au citron: the perfect balance
Over the past twenty years, this tart has gone through four or five versions, "but the framework is always the same." The lemon cream, without butter, has never changed. Arnaud Larher has long been marked by a past experience in which as much lemon pulp was used as butter. "It masked the acidity too much. I told myself there was something else to do", he recalls.
His current version is based on lightly salted Breton shortbread, lemon marmalade on top and delicately caramelized Italian meringue. The result is a fresher, more digestible tart, in which the acidity is fully expressed. Presented at his MOF competition in 2007, it now embodies a balance he no longer wishes to alter. "I told myself I couldn't improve it.
