Decadent desserts are in bloom at Fleur de Cocoa
By Suzanne Cristallo
The Aztecs were the first to make a drink of pounded cocoa beans and spices. While it was extremely bitter, the Aztec king Montezuma believed that chocolate was an aphrodisiac and, according to legend, downed 50 golden goblets of it each day.
Today, the cocoa bean combined with varying amounts of sugar, lecithin cocoa butter and sometimes milk is a voluptuously smooth delicacy with fans in every corner of the world.
In Los Gatos, the newly opened Fleur de Cocoa near the Los Gatos Cinema fulfills every chocoholic's fantasy. After a year of an almost total tear-down and reconstruction of the building that housed Mabel's Lantern House for 27 years, owners Nicola and Pascal Janvier opened their doors two Sundays ago to a waiting crowd of chocolate fanciers.
They came to sample French pastries, handmade chocolates, cakes, tortes, petits-fours and Swiss coffee and tea drinks to accompany croissants and brioches. Lunch was started last week with quiches and croque monsieur (ham and cheese) baguettes.
Pascal, 38, is a master pastry chef and chocolatier who learned his art the French way--as an apprentice to a master, starting at age 14 at his home in the Normandy region of France. He worked his way up the ranks, culminating his years of study with a degree in 1990 as master chef and instructor for Cocoa Barry's Chocolate Company in New Jersey.
His job was to make chocolatiers of chefs from around the country. Among his students was Nicola from Palo Alto, who traveled to the East Coast, specifically to take Pascal's course. "He was handsome and charming. Besides, I was a chocoholic," she relates with a smile. "It was love at first sight."
Her background in business and his culinary expertise were the groundwork necessary to start a store. They chose Los Gatos, she says, for its "artisan flavor" and dearth of French pastries, as well as its ability to support an expensive, high-end product. "I had wanted to be a chocolatier myself," she says, "but it's very difficult--an art form demanding lots of labor. I was so delighted to find someone to do the work," she says jokingly of her marriage and partnership with Pascal.
The labor comes with persnickety attention to details, such as the precise temperatures required for tempering (melting) the chocolate, or the proportions of sugar and chocolate liquor that denote bittersweet, semi-sweet, or sweet. Inattention to details can result in catastrophe--a sticky liquid mass that won't solidify, or turns white, or becomes too tough to bite into.
But when it's done correctly, the results can be akin to The Red and The Black, a cake created by Pascal and featured in Pastry Art and Design magazine, which honored the 10 top pastry chefs of America in 1998. The individual-serving cake is part three-layer sponge and chocolate raspberry mousse contained by walls of chocolate plaques.
For the smaller sweet-tooth, Fleur de Cocoa has inch-diameter chocolates for 95 cents, made from molds with designs revealing the flavors inside: tea leaves, coffee beans, walnuts and oranges. A pound of these handmade treats is $38.
Nicola and Pasqual plan to develop slowly, eventually opening a maximum of three stores. Pasqual also intends to start classes in Los Gatos similar to some he now conducts for Draeger's Market in Menlo Park and San Mateo.
Fleur de Cocoa, 39 N. Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos. Open Tue.-Sat. 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Sun. 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. 408.354.3574.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
