An assortment of chocolate truffles from Jean Paul Hevin. In the foreground:
Gemme, bittersweet chocolate ganache infused with smoky black China tea.
Cecile said, “Oh, Jean Paul Hevin? It’s Wednesday. You must try his tartelette chocolat.” Her eyes narrowed to tiny slits of pleasure.
It’s wonderful when you have only to drift a block or two from your hotel to fall into chocolate heaven. I’m on the rue Vavin, ambling toward the Jardin du Luxembourg and its pink-flowering magnolias, when my head swivels to the right.
There at number 3 is master chocolatier Jean Paul Hevin’s glossy boutique. The door is ajar. A starchy vendeuse inclines her head graciously when I point to the tartlet, a three-inch round of very dark bittersweet chocolate in a thin golden sugar crust. She places it carefully, like a large jewel, in Hevin’s signature brown and blue box. Next come truffles scented with ginger, cinammon and smoky black china tea; a box of intriguing Chocolats Dynamiques; and since I’ve been invited to a dinner party tomorrow, 24 assorted truffles for my hosts.
It seems to me that Hevin’s chocolates are at once austere and utterly luxurious. The 50-year-old chocolatier, who won the prestigious Meilleur Ouvrier de France award in 1986, has an unusually precise and exacting palate. His 72-percent- cacao, single origin bar from the Maralumi plantation in Papua, New Guinea tastes authentically of itself: natural bitterness balanced with a touch of sweetness, mildly acidic both in taste and aroma, with hints of green banana and local spices. Like Plato’s ideal chair, the Maralumi bar is the quintessential expression of the cacao from that very particular terroir.
Hevin’s ganache, on the other hand, is pure, unadulterated luxury: a richly hedonistic blend of bittersweet chocolate with the finest butter and cream. The flavors he adds—passion fruit, coffee, or cinnamon, for instance—are delicious. Yet even here, there is a meticulous and refined process of selection. Truffles, like Costa Rica, flavored with three kinds of oranges, or Zenzero, infused with ginger, are sophisticated, but certainly not playful or experimental.
Later that afternoon Serendipity and I share the tartelette chocolat. We are rapturous over the silken-textured bittersweet ganache in its fragile sugar and almond crust. This, it seems to me, is the pinnacle of sheer luxury and purity of flavor. Gemme, a truffle perfumed with smoky black China tea, is lovely. And the double-layered box of Chocolats Dynamiques turns out to hold a surprise or two: I'm torn between the luscious, slightly spicy Barre de la Passion (passion fruit- and pepper-infused ganache) and the Barre du Paradis, in which that unctuous ganache gets a kick from fresh ginger, Szechuan peppercorns and grains of paradise.
And the box of assorted chocolates? From the way my hosts’ eyes lit up when they spied Hevin’s brown and blue signature bag, I’m guessing that it was the perfect choice.
Jean Paul Hevin, 3 rue Vavin, Paris 75006. Telephone: 01 43 54 09 85. For other locations in Paris and Tokyo, see his website: www.jphevin.com.