Sweet dreams are made of chocolate

At 11am on a dismal, grey winter morning, Gregory Renard is rolling balls of smooth almond praline between his palms. A glass bowl filled with molten French Valrhona chocolate rests on the counter near his elbow.

A flawlessly coiffed woman bursts through the front door of his tiny shop, Cacao and Macarons, and stops dead in her tracks. She breathes deeply. Her eyelids flutter.

"Ahhhhhh," she purrs as a wave of chocolate aromas wraps her in a warm embrace.

"Bonjour!" cries Renard, 26 years old and impossibly thin, given that he spends his entire day in the company of some of the world's most seductive chocolate. "What do I have the pleasure of offering you?"

Where to start?

Platters of bite-size nuggets of chocolate beckon like edible gems: ebony hearts filled with layers of crispy wafer and chocolate ganache, dark chocolate rounds dusted with gold-leaf glitter, almond pistachio logs drenched in milk chocolate crowned with a glazed emerald-green pistachio nut.

Walking into some of Paris' fanciest chocolate shops is akin to entering a bank vault under the suspicious eye of a guard. Stepping into Renard's little store, wedged between a dry cleaner and an underwear shop on rue Saint Dominique near the Eiffel Tower, is like ambling into the family kitchen.

To be sure, at nearly $40 (Dh146) a pound, his prices would shock a Hershey bar fan. But his shop has its homey side, too. Behind the counter of expensive morsels, Renard pulls plastic tubs of creamy chocolate from a microwave oven inside a cluttered closet.

Convenient

"The microwave is very convenient," says Renard, clad in blue jeans and a sweater the colour of his Black Infinity ? 99 per cent cacao, the purest, most bitter chocolate in the shop.

 "But you have to be very careful. The chocolate can burn in a few seconds."

Renard, one of 36 certified artisan chocolatiers working in Paris's 100 chocolate shops, learned his people skills from his father, a butcher.

"I like producing chocolate," says Renard. "But I also like the contact with people."

Gold rush

At 1.30pm, a blast of winter air blows into the shop as one of his regular customers breezes through the door. Her neck is draped in gold, her wrists are wrapped in gold, her fingers are studded with gold.

"I'm in a rush," she pants. She's come for macarons, a speciality in Renard's shop. Oh no, not for herself, she explains. They are gifts for the housekeepers and cooks at her weekend house in the countryside.

While Renard packs the puffy, flavour-infused biscuits, the customer plucks a foil-wrapped candied chestnut from the glass platter on the counter. She gobbles the sweet in three voracious bites.

Small is nice

As she paws through a bowl of caramels, she explains: "I wouldn't go to a supermarket. I like small shops. It smells nice, and everything's handmade."

Renard snips and curls the red ribbons around the boxes and rings up a bill the equivalent of $76 (Dh279). No charge for the chestnut.
"It's a game we play," Renard remarks as the door slams behind her. "She comes in and helps herself. She knows I won't charge her. She's a good customer."