06/25/2026
Your reaction to my last post about Babà au Rhum from Eataly in Dallas made me unexpectedly nostalgic. ❤️
It reminded me of a dream I once had.
I first visited France in 2002, but I never had the chance to try a Babà au Rhum. Years later, life brought me back to France to study pastry at ENSP in Yssingeaux 2016. That’s where I finally tasted one for the first time.
I still remember that moment.
It instantly became my favorite dessert. Funny enough, I’m not really a dessert person—I usually prefer savory foods. But there was something about the Babà. To me, the rich brioche has an almost cheese-like flavor, and since I’m a cheese lover, I was hooked.
The version we made at school was soaked in a mint syrup (I burped mint for days! 😂). Later, during my training in Lyon, I learned the rum version. My chef used a beautiful rhum from Martinique, and that’s when I became fascinated by rum—not by drinking it, but by baking with it.
I started experimenting because every rum has its own personality. Some were too strong, but once reduced into the syrup, what remained were all those wonderful flavors.
Then I opened my own shop “Quixote” and I would finish each Babà with a brush of rum—or even serve it with a small dropper of rum—so every customer could decide how much they wanted. Since Martinique rhum is expensive here in the U.S., I found wonderful alternatives from Nicaragua and Honduras.
I even started selling little jars filled with mini Babàs soaking in rum syrup. They were delicious straight from the jar or spooned over vanilla ice cream.
Then one day, while walking through the French Quarter in New Orleans, I couldn’t stop imagining how perfect a Babà Bar would be there.
The idea had been inspired years earlier in Lyon, when I visited Comptoir de Mathilde and saw shelves filled with colorful bottles of rum and jars of Babàs soaking in syrup. That’s when it clicked.
What if people could choose the origin of the rum for their own Babà? A Babà Bar, combined with a coffee shop and artisan ice cream.
Imagine choosing your Babà and then choosing the rum you wanted it soaked in: Nicaragua, Honduras, Martinique, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Venezuela… each one telling a different story.
That Babà Bar never happened. I still love New Orleans.
But every time I see a Babà, I’m transported back to those days in France—to pastry school and burping mint for several days, Lyon, to the excitement of learning, dreaming, and believing that anything was possible.
Maybe pastry was never the destination. Maybe they were simply the language through which I learned to dream… to imagine businesses, create concepts, and see possibilities where others didn’t.
And maybe… that’s exactly what this next chapter is all about. ❤️
