Pierre Herme macarons: Funky, Edgy and Fabulous

Pierre Herme

133 avenue des Champs-Elysée, Paris France

After trying the classic and traditional macarons from Laduree, we visited one of Pierre Herme’s chocolate shops for funkier, edgier and more creatively flavoured macarons. The snooty service at Pierre Herme’s was comparable to Laduree but everything else was different. Pierre Herme is more contemporary in decor, music and of course in their sweets and macarons. French Vogue magazine has named Pierre Herme as “The Picasso of Pastry.” Even the way the macarons were arranged, all seductively messy, piled on top of each other was in stark contrast to the perfectly symmetrical arrangements of sweets at Laduree. Laduree’s pastry display cases reflect that of a meticulously manicured French garden (like the one we saw at the Palace of Versailles) and the pastry display cases at Pierre Herme represent the sexy, messy, corset-strewned floor of Marie Antoinette’s bedroom after a night of fun, wine and dancing.

The piled macarons at Pierre Herme weren’t even labeled so thank goodness we had our French cousins with us to ask the clerk about the flavours and translate this to us. The clerk was not amused.

It took us a while but we finally settled on some unique flavours and wildly gorgeous macarons and had some packaged up as gifts and others bagged for us to snack on.

Honestly, Pierre Herme macarons are almost too pretty to eat, and at one point (since the cookies were unlabelled), I was picking out the ones I wanted just based on the ones that I thought were prettiest.

The most memorable Pierre Herme macaron was the passion fruit and milk chocolate. I’m not just writing this because this was the most gorgeous macaron with its brown freckles, bright yellow cookie and milk chocolate filling. I happen to love the sweet and creamy milk chocolate and it was such a wonderful combo with the tartness from the passion fruit.

I bit into the green macaron thinking  that it would be pistachio, plus I thought it would be a safe choice, seeing that it was the one macaron which was pretty uniform in colour, green cookies sandwiching creamy green filling. It turned out to be Vert Matcha, Haricot Rouge Azuki, Citron Vert and Gingembre when I matched it up to the map that came with the box of macarons. This translates to green tea, lime and ginger. It was a pretty interesting combination and the hit of ginger really brought out the green tea and lime tastes. Who knew you could jam so much flavour into one little cookie.

Pierre Herme macarons were a little bit sturdier than the delicate, easily squished Laduree macarons. And they were filled with a generous amount of filling as opposed to the perfectly portioned Laduree macarons. Pierre Herme macaron fillings are nearly bursting out of the cookie. The actual texture of the cookie (this is my favourite part of a macaron) is still soft and chewy though, melting on my tongue.

We saved the rest of the macarons for our aunt but I will definitely be buying box loads of this stuff the next time I visit Paris!