A New Chocolaterie in the Marais

For years, the name of Jacques Genin was known only to connoisseurs who had tasted his superb chocolates and other confections at hotels and restaurants ranging from Alain Ducasse’s Plaza Athénée to Yves Camdeborde’s Le Comptoir du Relais. Working in virtual anonymity in a tiny unmarked atelier in Paris’s 15th arrondissement, Genin wasn’t really in the retail business—although he happily sold his chocolats to anyone curious enough to seek him out and knock on his door. All that changed in December 2008, with the opening of his bright and elegant two-level Chocolaterie in a 17th-century building in the upper Marais. Two long counters display chocolates and pastries whose flavors vary with the seasons and Genin’s inspirations. A spacious tea salon offers a comfortable space for sampling his Szechuan pepper ganache, mango-passionfruit caramels or éclair au chocolat. Customers can even climb the spiral staircase to the glass-walled workshop to watch Genin’s team filling éclairs and spreading flavored ganache to cool on long marble tables. It’s the hottest—and sweetest—new address in a city that was already a chocolate lover’s paradise. 133 rue de Turenne, 3rd, Métro: Filles du Calvaire. 01.45.77.29.01

Originally published in the March 2009 issue of France Today.