A Little Piece of Southern France: ¾ Pâtisserie, Tainan 四分之三法式甜點
by Qian Leung
@ 25 Oct 2018
A pretty lawn with stepping stones makes me wonder if I’d been spirited away to a secret garden. Within, dainty gâteaux are displayed in a chilled glass case like shimmering jewels. “I have two older brothers, who run this shop with me,” says Alinna Ho, 26, of
¾ Pâtisserie. “We are the 3 in the ¾. Together with our guests, we hope to make a whole.”
Local teas such as jinxuan green tea are infused into creams, and local fruits such as meyer lemons from Pingtung are used for lemon tarts. In the early days of running the boutique, when the acceptance level for the finer kind of French pastries was still rather low, the Le Cordon Bleu Paris graduate had thoughts of giving up. “Now, there is a group of customers who understands me well.”
While a breath of Chantilly coated with sky blue cocoa butter looks dreamy and whimsical, the specks of Tahiti vanilla within are in fact a hidden reference to the deteriorating air quality in Taiwan. Passionfruit cream and caramel confiture form the heart, and the entire creation sits upon a snowflake-shaped sablé.
“Passion alone is not enough,” she says. “Because in pastry, you need to do the same thing day in, day out.” If one day, your passion has run dry, you must find a reserve of strength, patience, and stamina to draw from, to go on. The idea for manjari shooting star, made with manjari chocolate mousse, local pear mountain red tea cream, and hazelnut praline, came to Ho in a dream – literally.
“Our hope for ¾ Pâtsserie is to try different things, such as floristry, or weddings, with desserts as the starting point.”
