Photo by Christian Gooden (Post-Dispatch)
La Patisserie Chouquette
Maybe my greatest accomplishment during the research for this year’s STL 100? I managed to stop by Simone Faure’s La Patisserie Choquette and not buy a croissant, canale or the chocolate croissant known simply as the Darkness. (This is a bit of a cheat: the Darkness wasn’t available that day.) I opted instead for a pastry of the day, layers of cake and coconut mousse topped with tart calamansi (a lime-like fruit) and coconut shavings. And because I can’t walk out of La Patisserie Chouquette with only one dessert, I also ordered the tiramisu brownie, which marries the lightness of the one dessert to the cocoa intensity of the other, creating something wholly its own and, as with everything at this Botanical Heights gem, wholly delicious.
Hours: 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)
Opened: 2013
Must order: The Darkness ($4)