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Fauchon
Laurent Adamowicz, WG'84
It is not a good day for shopping. But inside Fauchon's
Park Avenue store, the frigid February gale that is raking
Manhattan's streets and avenues quickly dissolves into a
sea of warmth and luxury.
Fatigued, frozen shoppers settle into soft chairs in the
store's tea salon for a restorative plate of petits fours and a
cup of Darjeeling or Earl Grey.
In the retail store, Laurent Adamowicz is helping a customer
who wants passion fruit preserves.
"In the world, you're not going to find a line of preserves
this rich," says Laurent Adamowicz, sweeping his
hand past shelves of exotic jams and jellies.
There are strawberry preserves with rose petals and
preserves of bitter orange from Seville. There are peach
preserves with Szechuan peppercorns.
This is not your neighborhood supermarket. Fauchon
carries 43 kinds of mustard and 96 different spices. There
are more than 100 varieties of tea. "We don't want to be
the everyday store with the everyday products that everybody
has," Adamowicz says. "We're the symbol of French
gastronomy."
Adamowicz took over what is arguably France's most
beloved culinary institution in 1998, after 14 years in the
food business. At the time, there were Fauchon stores all
over Europe and much of Asia, but none in the United
States. If American gourmets wanted traditional fruit confits
or perfect croissants, they had to make the pilgrimage
to Fauchon's emporium in the Place de la Madeline.
Since buying the company, Adamowicz has opened two
Fauchon locations in New York, one on Park Avenue and
the other on Madison Avenue at 77th Street. A third store
is about to open on Third Avenue.
In the rest of the United States, gourmet shoppers can
find a selection of Fauchon products at Neiman Marcus
stores. Adamowicz inked a deal with the department store
in October.
The company was founded in 1886 when Auguste
Fauchon began selling produce from a wooden cart. He
soon gained a reputation for having the freshest and most
exotic fruits and vegetables in Paris and by 1890 had a
shop in the bustling Place de la Madeline, where he added
wine, foie gras, coffee, and teas to the inventory.
In 1898, Fauchon opened the first Salon de The in
Paris. Of all the gourmet foods the store sells, tea remains
the most celebrated. Of the more than 100 varieties, there
is a black tea flavored with cupuacu, an Amazonian fruit
that tastes like pina colada, and Soir de France, a blend of
China and Sri Lanka teas flavored with apricot and blood
orange and sprinkled with orange peel and petals of rose
and sunflower.
In 1905, Auguste Fauchon began selling his wares
by catalogue, making them available to epicures all over
Europe. The company continued to innovate throughout
the 20th century, creating the first flavored teas in the
1960s and the first flower-petal teas in the 1970s. Now
its 200 chefs concoct both traditional French delicacies
and avant garde creations such as mustard flavored with
smoked Lapsang Souchong tea.
When he enrolled at Wharton more than 20 years
ago, Adamowicz says, the United States wasn't ready
for a store like Fauchon. He had decided to attend an
American business school after France elected a socialist
government in 1981 and chose Wharton for its international
orientation.
After graduating, he worked for Beatrice Foods and a
number of international companies before starting his
own business in 1992.
America is a challenge for gourmet food purveyors,
Adamowicz says, partly because the market has only
recently developed for top-notch food products on this
side of the Atlantic. Even more difficult, he says, are
the regulations and trade barriers that keep all raw milk
cheeses and many meats, pates, and similar products out.
But there is no obstacle to bringing genuine Parisian
pastry to New York. Adamowicz has 23 pastry chefs on
Long Island making petits fours, croissants, brioche,
and other delights. The techniques and the ingredients
come straight from France. In the case of the croissants:
flour, fresh butter, fleur de sel from Gironde, and Volvic
mineral water.
People who return from Paris often declare that the
croissants they have just enjoyed cannot be had anywhere
else in the world. But they can, Adamowicz believes, if
you transport everything – the techniques, the talent, and
the ingredients. Fauchon has all three.
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