Tag: French pastry

Pastry Chef of the Year – Vincent Pellerin

Image may contain: 1 person, smiling, standing and indoor

Vincent Pellerin performs something of a magic act nightly at Partage: he creates a dessert program that is very modern, but also a throwback. The old school part is his rolling dessert cart —  presented to every table at meal’s end – where you’ll find such classics as rhum baba (each with its own alcohol injection tube), flaming baked Alaska, and French macarons so good you’ll think you’re on the Champs-Elysee.

More modern are his caramel, Earl Grey and chocolate candy bar, kalamansi cheesecake, and a sour apple pie with green apple foam. If those don’t have you dropping your fork in awe, there are peaches with white chocolate mousse on a lemon crumble, or pumpkin with mandarin/saffron jam.

These are not “neighborhood restaurant desserts;” these are Michelin-star worthy creations that would be right at home at any top Strip address, and Pellerin –  classically-trained in France – churns them out nightly (and seasonally) for two restaurants: Partage and EATT.

Pastry chefs may be an endangered species these days, but Pellerin’s creations are so good he reminds us why god invented sugar, flour, butter, and pastry chefs in the first place.

EATT GOURMET BISTRO

7865 W. Sahara Ave. #104

Las Vegas, NV 89117

702.608.5233

https://eattfood.com/

PARTAGE

3839 Spring Mountain Road

Las Vegas, NV 89102

702.582.5852

https://partage.vegas/

 

 

Eat This Now (like a Frenchman) – PAYARD’s Raspberry Napoleon

[imagebrowser id=1166]

If you’ve ever eaten a Napoleon — and let’s face it who hasn’t? — you are familiar with the shattered, mille-feuille* mess created by your first attempt to cut through all those luscious layers** of pastry and pastry cream.

We’ve eaten hundreds of them over the years, from Naples (where they may have originated) to Napa, and never been able to avoid smashing this otherworldly confection into oblivion before we ever take a bite! So hard is it to eat one gracefully that many a time, in many a pastry shop (hello Fauchon!), we often forgo savoring the silky, vanilla custard as it beckons within the buttery, leafy shards encasing it, because it’s so f*cking hard to eat!

Enter Franck Savoy, Caesars’ Director of Restaurants and a man with a certain pedigree in such matters, at last Friday’s lunch at Payard.

“Looks delicious,” said ELV greedily. “Nobody makes pastry like Francois Payard.”

“But John, don’t you know how to eat it?” replied Franck.

“Sure,” we replied. “You just smash it down, the custard and crumbs go everywhere, then you scrape it off the plate.”

“Tu est trés fou!”*** scoffed the Frenchman. “Eet eeze sooo easy, mon ami. All you do eeze turn eet on eets side. See how easy?”

And so it was, and so it is, and thus did the experience become the (increasingly rare) something new for ELV to learn in the food world.

Merci beaucoup Franck!

It costs $7 and is so good, you’ll be scraping it off the plate no matter how you cut  it.

Just thought you’d like to know.

PAYARD BISTRO AND PATISSERIE

In Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino

3570 Las Vegas Blvd. South

Las Vegas, NV 89109-8924

702.731.7849

http://www.caesarspalace.com/casinos/caesars-palace/restaurants-dining/payard-patisserie-detail.html

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

* Mille-feuille (MEEL-fooey), means “thousand-leaf” en Français.

** 729 layers to be exact…or 2,187 depending on how many times you fold the dough.

*** French for: “You ill-mannered, uncouth American.”