Kat's 9 Lives

I love caramel au beurre salé, aka salted caramel.  Not to be knocking the US, but it is just different when you are in France where they have perfected caramel and it is widely available.  It is hard to find a great caramel au beurre salé that absolutely melts your senses and melts in your mouth.  I will however admit that Oprah Winfrey was right when she dubbed Boule her favorite place for salted caramel.  As fate would have it, they closed down years ago and has left a void in my palette!
Many years ago Ms. Lin Guide and I found the gourmet confection connoisseur, Denise Acabo.  I should post about it as she is a very sweet and endearing lady.  Local Parisians can be found there and they were very gracious as well as knowledgeable.  She seeks out the best treats around and one of the caramel au beurre salé she had was from Henri Le Roux.  Years later Henri Le Roux has found its way into Paris with a beautiful store loaded with candy.
What immediately caught my eye was the yuzu and matcha display.  They offer a yuzu matcha caramel, which is a perfect mixture of Japanese flavor.  I was sold by the display!
 They have a lovely display of Japanese teapots and cups that resemble traditional Japanese tea ceremonies.  After a long day of running errands to pick up all the best gourmet foods in Paris, it is good to find a place to sit and just relax a little.
The seats face outwards toward the streets.  There is not much food traffic but it is a calming ambiance.  Before we started buying the massive amount of gourmet sweets, I wanted to try and make sure that it was just as good as I remembered.

 For the café, coffee, you can choose between Colombie, Brésil, and Décafeiné.  I chose the Colombie for a fruitier texture.  This was 5.30 euros.  I thought the coffee was quite bitter and I wish I had some sugar and milk to lighten the taste.  It went well with the chocolates as to not fight the sweet flavor.  We chose the caramel au beurre salé chocolate along with some tea and hazelnut flavors.
They offered a plethora of chocolates! It was very hard to choose and I wanted a lot more but I had to make a tough choice... chocolates vs caramels.
Don't get me wrong, I love chocolates but there is only so much I can eat in one sitting.  The sweetness tends to overwhelm after a certain point.  I feel that caramels are a bit lighter to the taste, even though they are full of butter and may be more calories.
Each piece of chocolate is 1.50 euros with the exception of the specialty chocolates and each caramel is about 1 euro.  Trying a few pieces was good enough for me as I can come back for more.  The caramels will and have lasted me quite a while.
They offer a variety of fruit geleé but I am not a big fruit fan so I didn't really bother to have any.  Everything looked very tasty but I stuck with the caramels.
What I found most interesting here was that caramel au beurre salé was called CBS.  When I first saw the acronym, I was thinking that they were featured on CBS lol.  Maybe it was because I wrote for CBS that I automatically associated the acronym but now I have to remember that it can also be a delicious caramel! =)
They offer many seasonal flavors.  For autumn they offered epices de noel, tatin, cassis, griotte cardamome, and cinq saveurs.  Their year round flavors are caramel au beurre salé (CBS), chocolat amer, chocolat et orange, framboise, blé noir, orange & gingembre, thé, yuzu macha, café noisette, black sesame, and more.  I really liked the Asian flavors and influence.  They did a great job with the black sesame.  Henri Le Roux is definitely not your ordinary confectionery.
The lady there was very sweet and we got to sample a little bit of everything.  Not surprising too because we really dropped a fortune there and happily! =) I think friendly service is the way to go because it puts the shoppers in a great mood and we happily went crazy.  My excuse was that I bought a ton to share with all my friends! I did it for them! Yup, that is my story and I am sticking to it! O=D She threw in a bunch of samples in the end and was nice enough to give us gift bags.  They were very professional and patient.  I ended up with 3 ballotins and Ms. Lin Guide with 2 ballotins.  They play videos of how the gourmet sweets are made and it is interesting to watch.  If you love caramels then you should definitely visit this location in Paris to experience Henri Le Roux's classic recipe that first started in 1977.
Henri Le Roux
La Boutique Paris Saint-Germain 
1 rue de Bourbon le Château - 75006 PARIS 
Tél. 01 82 28 49 80