Welcome to SDM’s Guide to Food + Drink, a series created to help you decide on where to eat in San Diego—curated by the team at San Diego Magazine.
Eight years ago, our Content Chief Troy Johnson was eating at Addison. It’s got three Michelin stars now. Obsessive about best things. Every bite was intimidatingly good. But the Parker House rolls. Something socks-knocking about the rolls. He asked chef William how he was making them. William said, “I’m not, a young married couple in downtown is. You should check them out.”
So he did. It was called Le Parfait Paris. Ludivine and Guillaume Ryon were just starting out. “I would drive up to Addison in my crappy car, people thought I was in the wrong place or had gotten bad directions,” says Guillaume. “I would beg to talk to the chefs.”
He and Ludi brought some of the most talented bakers from France to San Diego, obsessing over making the perfect macaron. They worked the farmers markets, hustled. Eventually opened their first shop downtown. Word spread fast. Now, they’ve got stores across SoCal. They just hired Malek Larbi, who worked as executive pastry chef of a two-star Michelin restaurant in London (Les Maisons Rabanel). He made sweets for the queen.
Their dream is working because the bread is, the pastries are. They still hustle. As for the macarons, they’re rare treats. Macarons are notoriously fussy, laborious, hard to make. Harder to make right. That’s why most places in San Diego that serve macarons simply buy them from a wholesaler. Who could blame them.
“I think we’re able to get our quality because we use the best ingredients and we make everything from scratch,” says Guillaume. “It is so frickin’ hard.”
The Things You Gotta Eat
The salted caramel macaron is a pretty decent way to live. Try the noisette, a pillow-brick of chocolate dreams. And that chocolate-almond croissant is a life lifter.
