Pardon?

Emma-Jane Lee

Is there anything more charmingly French than the café gourmand?

If there was one thing I did not learn in Miss Mullineaux’s French class, it was the existence of what is perhaps the best-kept secret of all: a smorgasbord of desserts that are perfect for the indecisive among us. What I love most about France is unarguably the French Holy Trinity: la boulangerie, la pâtisserie, la chocolaterie You can keep your châteaux and your mountains, your côte Atlantique and your lovely rivers. It’s the divine delights of the village that still make my heart sing. I hope there will never be a time that the scent of un croissant or une chocolatine, a freshly-baked flûte or un pain aux raisins doesn’t fill me with the most marvellous of sensations.

Discovering le café gourmand, though, was a special delight. If England has afternoon tea, complete with a light egg and cress sandwiches and Victoria sponge, the café gourmand is unapologetically sweet and rich. Not only that, it is the place where French chefs get to exercise their whimsy and their loves. If their menu du jour is dictated by what is in season and what’s fresh, the café gourmand is dictated by their péchés mignons - their little indulgences.

What I love second-most about the café gourmand and les desserts is just how terribly the names translate. I’m sure this is part of the secret. No tourist would look at café gourmand on the menu and think that they’ll get a little assortment of desserts. I’m not entirely sure even what the best translation would be. Tasty coffee? Large coffee? Coffee to savour? Gourmet coffee? None of those convey the sugary pleasure of an assortment of divine miniature desserts and a fine shot of espresso.

And other pastries and desserts disguise their delights just as keenly. Who’d think that burned cream could be quite so delicious? No wonder English speakers kept to crème brûlée when stealing it for their own menus. Who’d want to eat a treat named after a beggar? Mendiants are popular at Christmas: the chocolate discs complete with nuts and dried fruits. You may also know the mendiant alsacien or Bettelmann, a kind of seasonal bread pudding. France has history where a variation of dessert names are concerned. One only has to eat a macaron de Montmorillon or a macaron de Nancy to know they’re not the dainty macarons Ladurée. It’s almost as if dessert chefs and bakers across France want to contribute to the surprise you’ll get, whatever you order.

Then there are the desserts and pastries which sound completely unappealing: la religieuse, le jésuite and le financier. Who’d want to eat a nun, a jesuit hat or a banker? Yet tell me I’ve got a delightful double-stacked profiterole, frangipane or crème pâtisserie wrapped in flaky pastry, or a delicate almond sponge and I’d have trouble deciding. Behind the undesirable name lies a delicious surprise.

Having not excelled in geography at school, I can’t say any of the geographical names enshrined in pastry are any more appealing. Floating islands, mountains, capital cities and coastal towns don’t really whet my appetite. A floating island can’t possibly do justice to the creamy comfort of soft meringue and custard; Mont Blanc does not reveal the heavenly softness of the famous French dessert, and Paris-Brest conveys nothing of the transcendent experience of choux pastry and praline cream. I simply can’t imagine a pastry named LondonPlymouth being quite so delicious. When it comes to desserts and pastries, French likes to tease and tantalise. None of your Spotted Dick, your jam roly poly, your Eton mess. Dickens could not wax lyrical about the Cratchits’ tiny plum pudding in the way Proust does about the madeleines of his youth. No wonder the seminal experience of so many young exchange students remains their first trip to the French bakery, where they are dazzled by a million delights. A flaccid supermarket version has nothing on the flaky satisfaction of a fresh, buttery croissant eaten warm with the flattened bag laid out to catch all the crumbs. Opening a paper bag still feels like unwrapping a veritable treasure. It’s the same when you order a café gourmand: the surprise is all the more delightful!