Macarons in NYC
During last weeks trip to New York City I bought macarons from two different locations, La Maison Du Chocolat and Bouchon Bakery. Both places had better macarons then the macarons at Patisseire Poupon in Baltimore.
La Maison Du Chocolat is located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza next to the NBC Studios entrance. All of the macarons we decided to get had chocolate in them, coffee, raspberry, caramel, chocolate, and vanilla cookies with a chocolate ganache filling. Macarons here costed $2.50 each
At Bouchon Bakery located at the Time Warner Center I bought three flavors of macarons, vanilla, chocolate, and caramel. Macarons here were $3.00 each. The macarons were filled with butter cream, except for the chocolate made with ganache.
For taste our favorite was the coffee macarons at La Maison Du Chocolat. But the vanilla at Bouchon was a close second (the fact that it was made with real vanilla beans really helped the flavor.) As for value Bouchon Bakery was better priced. Eventhough the cost at Bouchon is $.50 more a macaron, they are much larger. La Maison had a larger macaron for $5, but I did not try it to tell how it is.
Next time we go to NYC our plan is to stop at La Maison and get some more coffee macarons and vanilla macarons from Bouchon.
Bouchon Bakery Review
The menu comprised of mostly soups, salads and sandwiches, and the bakery selections for dessert. I decided to get the waygu beef Reuben, made with waygu pastrami, house baked rye, sauerkraut, Russian dressing and cheese (sorry don't remember the kind), and water to drink. Soon after my sandwich arrived.
The sandwich bread was accompanied with a salad. The salad was mesculin mix, with a classic vinaigrette, sprinkled with fresh chives. The flavor of the mesculin greens really stood out, I'm guessing that the salad greens were also sprinkled with a small amount of salt to help the lettuces have a stronger flavor. As for the sandwich the flavors of the sauerkraut and bread really stood out. While I do enjoy the flavor of sauerkraut I was someone disappointed, the selling point for the sandwich was the waygu pastrami, and there was only one slice of pastrami on the sandwich. For $14 I think that a bit more pastrami flavor would of helped me feel like I got my money's worth for the sandwich. Flavors of each individual ingredient used were excellent, and while eating you could taste the subtleties of the pastrami in the sandwich.
I didn't leave hungry so I feel I can still justify to myself spending the money, and the flavor of the sandwich was excellent. Maybe it's just a bit of my background of getting more meat on a sandwich, or I was just eating with my eyes but I felt my sandwich eating experience at Bouchon was a lacking in the beef. I think if I opened a restaurant without a name backing of a famous chef, and only put one slice of delicious meat, high end products and sold sandwiches in the $14-18 price range I would be considered a bit pretentious of my sandwiches and would quickly have to change my style of sandwiches.
I will do a review of the macarons from Bouchon later, with a review of macarons from La Maison Du Chocolat.