A huge pale pastel eco-friendly banner flaps over West Broadway.
To Francophiles and unreformed macaronaholics, the colour alone is sufficient to trigger Pavlovian drooling for that froufrou confections within.
The minty turquoise shade heralds the appearance in Soho of Ladurée. the venerable Parisian pâtisserie. Outdoors, a velvet rope stands prepared, just in situation there is a operate on salted caramel macarons or individuals lovely mountain tops of chestnut cream, mont blancs .
No such crowd materializes about this frigid day. But inside, beyond the retail counter using its serenely back-lit wall of pastries and pretty boxes, the tufted royal blue banquettes from the snug dining area are nearly at capacity.
Posh ladies with costly cheekbones drink tea. Sleepy-searching men in turtleneck sweaters demand the check. There's striped wallpaper around the ceiling, along with a sweet French server together with her hair pinned back is asking when the omelet with morels ought to be runny or dry? A guy in crimson tweed pants states to his lunch-mate, "Is that this chick paradise, or perhaps is this chick paradise?"
Soho has not been Soho for such a long time it's quaint nostalgia to question what the heck became of this once grungy a part of town. Do not to overthink it. Order a glass of vino and a few foie gras ($21), ringed in golden fat and offered with buttery slices of toasted kougloff. and (why don't you?) half a macaron.
You will find better macarons in Paris (hello, Pierre Hermé ) but none of them so legendary as Ladurée, which has developed in the sweets business depuis 1862. And merely whenever you think we are residing in a publish-macaron world, the person within the crimson pants states towards the sweet server: "Is the fact that French for macaroni?"
Really, he did. This area is weird, but it is a sweet fantasy, and delay pills work, so we type of find it.
