Seductive Gems From the Kitchen Of an Artisan

Three Hours With a Paris Chocolatier

PARIS

At 11 a.m. on a dismal, gray 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 coifed woman bursts through the front door of his tiny shop, Cacao and Macarons, and stops dead in her tracks. She breathes deeply. Her taupe-tinted eyelids flutter in ecstasy.

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

"The microwave is very convenient," says Renard, clad in bluejeans and a sweater the color of his Black Infinity -- 99 percent 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 garrulous people skills from his father, a butcher. "I like producing chocolate," says Renard, who wears his dark hair gelled in stylish spikes. "But I also like the contact with people."

At 1:30 p.m., a blast of winter air blows into the shop as one of his regular customers breezes through the door. She's dressed for chocolate in velvet pants the shade of bitter cacao and a sequined cashmere sweater set the color of buttery caramel. She is beanpole thin. Her neck is draped in gold, her wrists are wrapped in gold, her fingers are studded with gold.