Let them sew cake!
Stephanie Curtis reports.
| More 'Front Burner' articles in this issue |
| Princely piggy goes to market |
| Don't eat the food! |
| Splatter free |
| Branching out |
| Pint and shoot |
| Honey, I shrunk the chef |
Paris—For the second consecutive season, fashion and gastronomy have a sweet rendezvous at the Café de la Paix this fall. After inviting four grandes dames of Parisian style, including Chantal Thomass and Agnès B. to trade scissors for whisks in 2005–2006, when each designer created her own version of the restaurant's legendary best-selling mille-feuille pastry, the Grand Hotel's historic restaurant has passed the challenge on to male fashion dictators for its 2006–2007 pastry collection.
Appropriately, Paco Rabanne, the iconoclastic couturier renowned for his use of metal mesh and other unconventional materials in place of silken threads, seemed a natural to weave chocolate and cream into an ephemeral, edible model. In tandem with the restaurant's newly appointed head chef, Laurent Delarbre, Rabanne presented his creation, baptized Saveurs Croisées, to the press in late summer. The dessert adheres to his signature takes on patchwork: dark silken chocolate squares, alternating with white coconut mousse, the finished composition framed in a dress pattern of delicate chocolate tinted with silver. Rabanne compares this mosaic of flavors and textures to his metal mosaic dresses of the 1960s. "I am a gourmet-gourmand [a ravenous gourmet]," says Rabanne, "and I have enormous respect for creators of pastries, who marry craftsmanship with industry." His Saveurs Croisées will stay on the menu at the Café de la Paix through December 31. To come in 2007 will be two other fashionable pastries designed by men, although their creators have yet to be announced. The Café de la Paix's initiative coincides with the fourth edition of "Paris: Capitale de la Création," a series of professional salons devoted to fashion and home, held throughout the year in Paris.
