The Story of Ladurée

The history of Parisian tea rooms is intimately tied to the history of the Ladurée family. It all began in 1862, when Louis Ernest Ladurée, a man from France’s southwest, created a bakery in Paris at 16 rue Royale.

The same year, the first stone of the Garnier Opera House was laid, and the area surrounding the Madeleine was rapidly developing into one of the capital’s most important and elegant business districts. The most prestigious names in French luxury items had already taken up residence in this neighbourhood.

Under the Second Empire, cafés developed and became more and more luxurious. They attracted Parisian high society. Along with the chic restaurants around the Madeleine, they became the showcases of the capital. Women were also changing. They wanted to make new acquaintances, but literary salons and literature circles were outmoded.

Louis Ernest Ladurée’s wife, Jeanne Souchard, had the idea of mixing styles: The Parisian café and pastry shop gave birth to one of the first tea rooms in town. The ”salon de thé” had a definite advantage over the cafés: women could gather in complete freedom.

Our know-how

Ladurée is deeply connected to the success story of the little round cake, at once soft and crunchy: the unique macaron.

We are playing with a large range of exquisite flavours, such as chocolate, rose and vanilla, ensuring our pastries appeal to all tastes. We are revisiting classics such as the religieuse, the millefeuille, and the lemon meringue tart – giving them an unexpected twist while still maintaining a perfect flavour balance. The goal is to create harmony between sweet and savoury, with just a touch of sharpness. Ladurée’s patisserie creation process is consistently inspired by childhood memories.

We apply a certain philosophy to all of our prestigious creations – from the saint-honoré to the religieuse, the millefeuille to our famous macarons – and that is the balance of reason and feeling.

Since the beginning, Ladurée has held women and children at its heart. Each pastry’s attractive colouring and flavours are designed to stimulate visually as well as gustatorially – patisserie is consumed by the eyes before it even reaches the mouth, after all. Clients come to Ladurée for a pistachio or rose religieuse, not just plain chocolate, and upon entering they find a picturesque scene, an ornate new world. They feel welcome and at home with a flavour range that you won’t find anywhere else; flavours dug out from days gone by, that they can discover with a sense of childish glee.

The Ladurée World

Ladurée: decoration and inspiration

For years we have been combining a plethora of styles with our characteristic art and ardour, two essential parts of the Ladurée lifestyle. Each of our interiors is an adventure onto itself. The architects of the Ladurée style are meticulous in their work and impressive in their range, as at ease in the 18th century as in antiquity or the times of Napoleon III. They are passionate about everything they build, paint, sew, and upholster, and each unique object they create is conceived of as a dream of sorts.

The emblematic colours of Ladurée

GREEN

Green was the original shade chosen for the walls of the first salon on the rue Royale, founded in 1862. This basic colour, in its many variations, has symbolized Ladurée ever since, like the cherub – a pastry chef – above the entrance to the salon. Yet initially it was white that dominated the shop-front and the interior décor. Even the pastries had a milky look and were sold in snow-white boxes. The idea then was to be subtly conspicuous, and the shop’s name was painted in Gothic lettering. Once an almost military shade of khaki, the Ladurée green is softer today, watered down a little. It is more sophisticated, and at the same time more feminine. Green is not a very common colour in cakes and pastries, although pistachio, basil, and lime are all exceptions to the rule. Yet it is the dominant hue of a basket of tropical fruit whose heady scents remind us of summer, a sea breeze, and sun-warmed bougainvillea on trellised walls. It is the colour of Granny Smith apples, young grass, spring leaves. It is the colour of nature, femininity, sweetness, and hope.

PINK

A natural choice at Ladurée, the rose is the flower of passion, of timeless longing, of eternal youth. Rosewater perfumes the kitchens of Ladurée and flavours its best-loved products. Sweets tasting of rosewater speak to us of love, St. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day. This legendary blossom with its mysterious oriental origins and inherent virtues makes us think first of the powdery sweetness of Turkish delight brought back from a journey to Istanbul. But the rose’s taste changes completely when its petals are transformed by human artifice. Enriched with a drop of juice from its blushing sister the raspberry to add a touch of tartness, the rose appears in an astonishing range of guises: the macaroon, the Saint Honoré (indeed, the rose-flavoured one is the best-selling version), the religieuse, the marshmallow, rose-petal jam, rosewater jelly, and even an enticing rose-flavoured chocolate.