Merry Christmas!
This time, bakery.
A French bakery.
But before that, of course, kitchen first.
Let's go!
Let's meet the owner of Un Je Ne Sais Quoi!
Are we ready to go into the kitchen and show us around?
Yes, let's go!
Yeah, let's go!
So this is the table when we make the Merveilleux.
We make all our shavings for the Merveilleux.
This is a Yule Log.
So we make the Buche de Noel,
and it's the same recipe as the Merveilleux, but in the shape of a Yule Log.
So here we have two small mixers,
for the ganache, for the whipped cream.
Camille is our Pastry Chef.
She comes from Strasbourg (France).
Hello, my name is Camille.
I started working here since February (of 2017).
Hello everyone in France!
Yeah very nice, I love the French language that's filled in this kitchen.
It's awesome! Look at the authenticity right here!
This is the coffee version of a gigantic 12-person Merveilleux.
He's just layering cream… coffee cream, is that right? Yeah.
Yeah coffee cream on top of it, and then later on
he's gonna roll it on some nice chocolate shavings.
For the chocolate and the coffee inside, it's Valrhona.
Valrhona is the best chocolate in the world… almost!
Yes. Wow I didn't know that. Oh my gosh the best chocolate in the world!
Now he's making the chocolate shavings right here.
Those beautiful toppings for their Merveilleuxs.
Ohh… so it just sort of shaves on the bottom
and then comes out in the tray like this on the bottom.
This is a huge piece of chocolate!
Was this machine bought from here?
No, it's from Dutch.
From Dutch? Ohh! Yeah, Germany.
From Germany, oh wow!
Very expensive.
Ohh.
Very expensive chocolate shaving machine!
He just handed me this, one of the world's best chocolates here for me to try.
Valrhona.
Valrhona is one of the best chocolates in the world,
So I'm gonna take my first bite... I'm so excited!
Mmm…!
Dark chocolate!
Oh I love dark chocolate, this is so good!
I love that it's not very sweet!
No.
Mmm very good.
And hey, look over here!
He's putting three meringues on top.
We don't add sugar.
The sugar is only in Meringue.
No chocolate, no cream, only Meringue (has sugar).
Only in meringues, no additional sugar or chocolate.
So this machine next to me is actually whipping
the cream and sugar together making meringues.
And the meringues are actually the top and bottom of their signature pastry, which is
their Merveilleux, right here on my right.
So yeah, again it's the top and bottom of it, inside it's the cream of different flavors.
It could be chocolate, it could be coffee, white chocolate.
Yeah this is it!
This is all of the behind-the-scene right here in this tiny kitchen!
Alex here, she's been working here for about a year and a half,
and she can speak French as well!
You want to tell us what these are?
Sure, so these here are our brioche.
My personal favorite is the sugar ones, so there's actually some sugar cubes inside.
It's really tasty.
We also do them in chocolate chip.
I don't know if you can see.
Oooh yes we love chocolate.
We have them in cranberry as well.
Oooh look at that!
This is our Pain au Chocolat.
Chocolate inside a… like rolled inside a croissant.
This is our almond croissant.
So it's similar to a plain croissant, but it has this pastry cream with almond inside.
It's really tasty.
We also do that with the chocolate croissant.
So that's the almond and chocolate.
This is a bread pudding.
And so we actually make the bread pudding from… if we have brioche leftover from
the day before, we actually that's how we do our bread puddings,
so sometimes it's cranberry, sometimes it's chocolate chip.
Either way, very tasty.
A little bit of powdered sugar on top… yeah and it's pretty.
We have some baguettes here that we sell.
They come from Bethesda.
There are Christmas cookies.
Gateaux de Noel that are actually a Strasbourg recipe.
Because the owners are from Lyon, France and the pastry chef is from Strasbourg.
Do you want to tell us a little bit about the coffee too?
The coffee machine? Sure.
So this little badge here says "Artisti del Gusto."
It's recognize for coffee excellence, the drinks we serve.
Because we use this machine here with our Illy coffee blend.
So this machine and our trained staff as well as the coffee that we use
the Illy coffee that we use.
This badge of excellence for the coffees that we serve.
Okay! That's awesome!
Thank you! Yeah you're welcome.
So we have Grayson here, one of the other staff members.
Looks like he's making coffee.
Can you tell us what you're doing?
Yes, so I'm making a latte.
Umm so we grind the coffee, and then you crimp it like this, and get off of the coffee grinds.
And you put it in the machine here.
and then next we're gonna make the latte milk.
So you always prime it before you do the coffee.
And with the milk it's really important that you don't get a lot of bubbles,
especially for the lattes.
We try and do a nice design on top as well.
How long have you been making coffee?
Umm I've been making coffee about a little over a year now.
I've been working here a little over a year, since last November.
Oh nice!
There you go.
Wow. Beautiful, look at that!
Thank you.
You're welcome. Thank you so much!
First, of course I need to try their signature Merveilleux.
This is made of meringues,
and then outside it's covered with whipped cream, and then
just covered with layers of their homemade chocolate shavings
I think we got the chocolate flavor one.
Wow look at this. Look at the inside!
So I'm gonna take my first big bite of this Merveilleux.
This is a really big bite.
Mmm…
I feel like I'm eating snow!
So smooth and soft.
It's not super sweet.
I really feel like I'm eating like chocolate snow!
This is amazing!
Mmm…
By the way our latte isn't sweetened,
so, it goes really well with our sweet pastry.
Gotta have another bite!
It's almost like ice cream too.
It's not as creamy as it looks.
This is again, it's very powdery, like an ice cream.
I hardly had to chew, it just sort of dissolves in my mouth.
I love this chocolate snow!
Earlier inside the kitchen, Francois gave me
a small piece of their freshly baked puff, chouquette.
And this is basically a large version of it, and it's a cream puff
because it's filled with cream inside.
One thing to highlight is that
this cream puff was voted
on the Washingtonian article,
one of the best Washington DC's cream puffs,
so we definitely have to try this out!
Look at this, ooh look at how soft and delicate this dessert is! **speechlessly delicious**
Merry Christmas!
The cream is so soft.
It's like umm… how do you describe it.
Like cotton?
No, it's softer than cotton.
It's so smooth, like…
I don't know what to say.
This is so good!
The cream!
Oh my gosh!
That cream, I just need to have another… just pure cream without the pastry.
It feels so light.
It's obviously sweet, but it's not sweet like so heavy… like store-bought whipped
cream.
This feels very light… and just super smooth.
You just gotta come here and try this yourself.
The third dessert we got here is the Paris-Brest, and it's known for its bicycle circle shape,
almost like the American donut, but thinner, and lighter!
Inside it's stuffed, or filled with praline cream.
So I'm gonna dig in right now… my first bite.
And this is also made with choux pastry, which is a very light European pastry that they
use here.
Mmm…
I love the praline cream because it's very nutty.
And again, they really don't make their cream and their pastry super sweet, which
I really like!
It's almost… it's like chocolaty and nutty at the same time.
You know, it's really hard to eat multiple desserts all at the same time…
But here at Un Je Ne Sais Quoi, you can definitely do it, and make sure you enjoy your desserts
with a side of coffee!
This is a very fluffy butter croissant right here!
And it's pretty big!
Next, chocolate croissant (Sorry, I should have said Pain au Chocolat!)
Mmm… it's chocolaty, inside feels very airy and fluffy too.
Compared to the croissant, just the regular butter croissant, this is much more on the
chewy side.
It feels more filling compared to just the plain croissant.
And it added a little bit of sweetness to it cause' it has chocolate chips in it.
So we have one of the owners of Un Je Ne Sais Quoi right here, Aude.
First of all, can you pronounce the name of this pastry store again, and what does that
mean?
Yes.
The name is "Un Je Ne Sais Quoi."
That means "I don't know what."
It's something you can't explain.
You appreciate it, but you don't know what it's made of until you eat it.
So we wanted a special name for this place because the Merveilleux is quite unknown in
the U.S., and we didn't find this anywhere else… this pastry recipe.
Oh wow.
And since when was this opened?
I just want to make sure our audience know that.
Yes, so we've opened for one year and a half.
A year and a half now, so they just opened not super long ago, but it's been very busy
here.
That means you guys do a really good job with your pastries obviously!
So here in Washington, DC, there's a lot of pastry stores and bakeries.
So what does this particular pastry store make it different from other bakeries out
here?
So first of all, we make the Merveilleux, which is a French recipe from the North of
France.
We use lots of French products, like Valrhona chocolate, like sel de guerande (French sea
salt).
We use vanilla from Madagascar.
We have a French pastry chef.
We, because we wanted to involve the French skills, the French touch of pastries.
A lot of American people like to speak French.
They like to come here and speak French with us, and to practice French.
Oh that's awesome!
Which makes this place even more authentic!
Oh do you want to point out the… the five art works we saw in the front bar?
We wanted to create a wonderful atmosphere, so we asked a French artist from Bordeaux,
Claire Guiral to create one character per Merveilleux.
So she created a deer, a fox, a fairy, a jay, and an unicorn!
Five of them, they're made of papers.
They're really nice.
Everybody thinks they're edible, but they're not made of chocolate, they're made of paper!
Finally, we got to try their Christmas pastry right here.
It's the Napoleon!
Look at that Rudolph on top of it!
This is only available during winter time, for the holiday season!
I think I'll have to cut into this.
I really don't want to destroy the shape of the Rudolph right here, but I have to…
Oooh look at that crispiness of that pastry on top.
This is made of fluffy pastry dough, and inside is basically custard cream.
The cream inside is super custardy.
Again, it's not very sweet.
And that layers of Napoleon pastries just feel very fluffy and crunchy at the same time.
Oh and I just gotta take a sip of my mocha too.
Mmm…
I just really love how chocolaty this mocha is, and I don't think they put any sugar
in other than the cream… ok maybe a little bit of sugar because of the chocolate on the
top and on the side…
This is very warming.
It just goes perfectly with our pastries!
So we have our awesome couple here!
The wife, Aude, she is kind of the business part of, the face of the pastry store, and
we have Francois here, who is the master behind all their beautiful pastries and desserts
in the kitchen.
They work really well together guys!
Thank you very much!
Thank you so much!
Merci!
Merci beaucoup!
What an authentic French experience we had right here at Un Je Ne Sais Quoi!
Amazing owner couple right here that just started this pastry store with a passion,
and of just a simple reason of wanting to live in Washington, DC.
How amazing is that!
And their pastry, their cream, to every detail is so carefully made.
And just all of their desserts feel very delicate.
So I enjoyed my experience here a lot, I hope you did too!
If you enjoyed our video today, please don't forget to hit the thumbs-up button below,
and subscribe to our channel for more tastes of the world cuisine in the U.S.!
Until then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
And, Stay happy!
Eat Yummy!
I'm Naomi!
See you on our next video!
Bye!
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