La Cure Gourmande: Melt-in-your-mouth shortbread in Paris, France

La Cure Gourmande

55 rue saint louis en l’ile 75004 Paris, France

There is a famous bridge in Paris, France near Notre-Dame Cathedral where lovers write their initials on padlocks and fasten the locks to the bridge as tokens of their eternal love. I spent almost an hour photographing all the locks on this bridge. I am a hopeless romantic. It was the old, rusty and dinged locks that were the most romantic, the ones that had been there the longest. And if you happen to be strolling hand-in-hand with your sweetheart across this bridge, you might want to take a little stroll down one of the narrow side streets to find the most charming little cookie shop in Paris called La Cure Gourmande. Honestly, one of the best cookies I’ve ever eaten was from this shop.

We found La Cure Gourmande completely by accident. We were sightseeing and snapping pictures, poking around the narrow streets, and I do mean narrow. I am amazed that a car can even fit through the skinny streets of Paris. We stumbled upon La Cure Gourmande and had to go in, it looked so enchanting from the outside with its storybook-like interior through tall picture windows and door slightly ajar. As if it was beckoning us in.

We entered to find endless bins of candies and cookies, sold in bulk or packaged in pretty tins and jars. This would have been a perfect place to buy gifts to take home.

We saw some familiar cookies that can be found back home in Canada like chocolate chip and plain butter cookies. The chocolate chip turned out to be crispy and very sweet so I guess they weren’t exactly like the ooey, gooey, chewy chocolate chip cookies that I’m used to at home. The butter cookies were extremely rich, despite being so light and thin. And no, I have not figured out how French women stay so thin.

We also bought some filled cookies: fourre chocolat filled with nutty and bitter dark chocolate and fourre noix de coco filled with sweet coconut. Both were delicious.

My absolute favourite cookie and one of the most scrumptious things I ate on this trip was the mantecaos amandes: it was similar to a Spanish shortbread, sweet, crumbly and so incredibly light and loose but rich all at the same time.

It was very crumbly upon my first bite but the powdery bits melted in my mouth and folds of buttery and almond flavours danced around my tongue for the rest of our walk around the Paris streets. I have to go back to this cookie shop!