Zac and I were looking for somewhere to go that wasn’t somewhere we’d been ceaselessly before. And wasn’t likely to shut about a week after we went. Being both fans of intricate baking, Bristol L’eclair seemed a very amenable option, not least given it is broadly equidistant between us. I was very excited.
An excitement that could only be matched by disappointment when we realised, stepping into the incredibly minimalist shop front, that the minimalism extended to not actually being a café of any form. The best laid plans of mice and men and Zac and Sam.
Still, we weren’t to be deterred. The eclairs looked delicious, so much so that I broke any reasonable budget of both pounds sterling and calories on four eclairs to take back home with me.
I went for a classic, because of course you have to - the skill of a chef is best demonstrated in how they pull off the simplicity of the classics; what happens when you can’t hide behind fanciness? - as well as a bannoffee pie eclair, a chocolate brownie eclair, and a lemon meringue pie eclair - what I thought to be a suitable range. Zac had a slightly different selection, including but not limited to a macaron eclair, which as far as I could make out was just three macarons baked together. Fair play, that’s doubling down on the Frenchness, I admire it.
The four eclairs did not - perhaps inevitably - last as long as I might have hoped they would. But they were each delicious. The choux pastry was perfectly light whilst maintaining structural integrity in the face of some quite overwhelming fillings. I’d have maybe preferred a bit more lightness in the cream of the classic, but the more complex ones did live up to their heightened promises, the layer of actual brownie under chocolate creme pat, the fluffy but biting meringue piping, the actual banana!