Bon vivants will agree that the bustling boulevards, picturesque cobblestoned streets, and jaw-droppingly exquisite architecture of Paris are nothing short of paradise. Gourmands undoubtedly second that enthusiastically. Connoisseurs of both sweet and savory pleasures can follow their sharp olfactory receptors to find an artisanal haven within the city’s 11th arrondissement. Tucked away in an ancient courtyard of the rue de la Roquette is la Manufacture of Alain Ducasse. Since 2013, Ducasse and his expert chocolatier team have been re-inventing chocolate’s glorious promise of the aroma and taste of paradise into a strong pillar of the Ducasse gastronomic empire.
This empire of Ducasse has graced many pages of NAVIS issues over the years. La Manufacture is a chocolate factory, equipped with vintage machinery, working madly during the day in full view of an entranced clientele, standing behind vintage glass-covered displays sitting alluringly in the shop. By opening a place to explore aromas, tastes, and fantasies, Alain Ducasse has created a haven of pure bliss.
And here, in a chocolate factory whose size would charm even the irascible Mr. Wonka, is where the curious can visualize and learn about the evolution of this magical substance, a painstaking ten-step process that commences on the cacao plantation, progressing all the way from bean to bar.
Chocolate is the food of the gods. Both the botanical name of the tree which produces the beans as well as the beans’ primary active component, an alkaloid, that induces pleasure, is theobromine, from the Greek theobroma or “food of the gods.” It’s an alkaloid which is also found in coffee and tea, with effects similar to caffeine and cocaine, like heart rate elevation. Is it an aphrodisiac? Perhaps, although we – ahem, science, that is – need to study this further.
It has always been essential for Ducasse to focus on the source of each ingredient he selects, not merely the origin of these precious cocoa beans, or the vanilla, or the coffee with which we carelessly toss back a gulp before swallowing a biscuit (more on those later), but to how these ingredients are processed. Returning to the quaint old days of an earlier artisanal craft when derision faced anyone that employed machinery. And certainly not the industrial behemoths that churn in plants now, but ancient “tech” machinery, once neglected and rusted, now sourced, repurposed, and resurrected to function magically here, with operational input graciously handed down from long-retired masters. The size is ideal for constant experimentation and “tweaking” that would be impossible in an industrial plant setting.
The chocolate at La Manufacture takes on a mouthwatering array of forms and functions: dark, light, chocolate for drinking, powdered for dusting, and for coating almonds. Filled to bursting with pistachios and hazelnuts or embracing oranges and passion fruit: these treasures evolve as pralines and nougats, ganaches and bars and the amalgam of deliciousness known as mendiants. They’re all here, anticipating their delicious demise by mouth. As Ducasse himself has quipped, as only a true chocoholic could, “Chocolate is a promise of bliss, to which we voluptuously relinquish ourselves.”
Chocolate also pairs inseparably with gelato, which one can also find here, as well as coffee and, most recently, biscuits. Since autumn of 2022, Les/The Manufactures has introduced nearly thirty varieties of sweet treats, with textures, tastes, and even colors, adding to a burgeoning gastronomic empire by transforming even the everyday into that which is sublime.
Photos: Maki Manoukian, Atelier Mai, Vincent Nageotte | Words: Janine Devine
