Le Café Pouchkine (Paris, FRANCE) ★★★★☆

Café Pouchkine is a French patisserie, tea salon, restaurant and bar all in one. I recalled they used to have a store at Printemps (not sure if it's still there) but a few years ago, the group decided to launch this flagship café, restaurant and bar just across the street from L'église de la Madeleine.



The two-story premise boasts more than 600 square metres of real estate. Just by looking at the menu briefly, I could immediately tell that it's a French tea salon with a Russian accent since prominent traditional Russian dishes like Russian salad, borscht and beef Stroganoff are all well represented.



I was quite fascinated by the work to transform the former drugstore belonging to a pharmacist-apothecary in the 18th century into this neo-classical Parisian café. It must be a lot of work there.



I didn't have time to check out their tea salon since I had to rush back to the hotel. So, just a 5-minute tour of their pastry shop to satisfy my curiosity.



Famous for their Médovic (famous Russian dessert re-interpreted by Café Pouchkine, made of buckwheat honey biscuit, sweet condensed milk and Russian sour-cream) and Pavlova Mont-Blanc, I thought I could get a couple of them for my family to try but they were already sold out at 5PM.



Luckily, they still have their Spring Matryoshka and Pouchkine mille feuille. Of course, I won't mind a little more dessert despite just visiting La Pâtisserie Christophe Michalak Printemps a while ago.



Masha (€8.20) - Their Matroyoshka (with fruity flavors!) is just too cute for me to pass up. 



The Russian doll shaped cake came with a small layer of shortbread on the bottom with lemon cream, lime bavaroise and red berries gelee rounding out the ingredients. It's worth noting that everything was made from tonka beans. With all the ingredients like red berries and lime, one would think that there would be a fair amount of acidity that came with it but it wasn't the case at all. In fact, it was really well balanced between sweetness and acidity.



Pouchkine mille feuille (€7.30) - Delicious almond nougat and vanilla cream layered with crunchy caramel. It's a little heavier than the typical mille feuille because of the caramel but if you're a caramel lover, you would fall in love with it. 







Food Rating: 6/10
Price: €€€
Address: 16 Place de la Madeleine, 75008 Paris, France
Closest Metro Station: Madeleine
Tel: +33 (0)1- 5343-8160
Website: www.cafe-pouchkine.fr