Oh là, Ladurée

Hints to Lady Travellers is spending a few days at home in Dublin, getting ready for the next leg of her travels. And guess what? My nephew GK and I are vaccination twins – we both got injected yesterday morning and neither one of us cried. Surely this is all the proof his mother needs that she should give him to me? Otherwise, the stories of my preparations (laundry and packing) aren’t all that exciting – but don’t worry. I have lots still to catch up on. For example, on Tuesday, I visited the high altar of macaroons, the Ladurée shop and restaurant in Paris.



Ladurée is where high fashion meets low tourism. For every woman with a Chanel bag, there’s a tourist in a t-shirt eating chips with ketchup (sitting beside me, as it happened). The setting is very rococo, all pale green and gold and writhing pink-fleshed cherubs on the ceiling.


But the main event was obviously the macaroons. I ordered a little plateful of four mini macaroons: cassis-violette, raspberry, pistachio and salt caramel. Look how pretty they are:



I actually think I liked the lemon best. (Yes, it turns out the yellow one was lemon. I could have complained but a) I really liked it and b) the service was very slow and I had things to do.) The cassis one was also good, the raspberry one was too jammy and the pistachio, while good, just didn’t quite live up to my high expectations.

The odd combination of clientele made the experience interesting, but another time I think I would just buy the macaroons to take away. And then no one could see me licking the crumbs off my fingers….