Ladurée from “Gossip Girl”

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Ever since watching the Season 4 episode of Gossip Girl titled “Juliet Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”, in which Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) was shown in a bubble bath eating a box, ahem, boxes of Ladurée macarons, I have been just slightly obsessed with the Paris-based confectionery. Since the chain’s only U.S. outpost is located in New York, though, and since it did not open until August 2011 and my last trip to the Big Apple was in 2009 (yikes!), I had never had the chance to sample any of the bakery’s iconic pastel-colored wares. So when my best friend, Robin, informed me that Ladurée had a shop in Zurich, I just about passed out from excitement and added the place to my Switzerland Must-Stalk list – even though, being that nothing has been filmed there, it is not technically a stalking location.

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Ladurée was originally founded as a small bakery at 16 rue Royale in Paris in 1862 by a miller from the southwest of France named Louis Ernest Ladurée. In 1871, the shop was burned in a fire and Louis subsequently built a larger pastry store in its place. He commissioned French painter/poster artist Jules Cheret to design the interior, which was bathed in a celadon hue. It was not until 1930, though, when the shop started serving its now legendary macarons, that Ladurée gained its immense popularity. There are several differing accounts as to who actually created the macaron as it is known today, but, according to the Ladurée website, Louis’ grandson, Pierre Desfontaines, is the responsible party. Although a single-decker variety of the meringue cookie had been in existence since the 1500s, it was not until Pierre came up with the idea of cementing two of those wafers together with a ganache paste that the contemporary macaron was born. The rest, as they say, is history.

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Shortly thereafter, Pierre, acting upon an idea from Louis’ wife, Jeanne Souchard, decided to open a female-friendly tea salon on the premises. At the time, the fairer sex was not allowed inside of Paris cafes. As you can imagine, the Ladurée tea room quickly became a massive hit.

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In 1993, the father and son duo of Francis and David Holder purchased the bakery with the hopes of taking it global. And that they did. The second Ladurée opened on Paris’ prestigious Champs-Élysées in 1997. Thirteen additional French stores quickly followed. Today the company has boutiques in twenty different countries, including Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Hong Kong, from which it sells a whopping 15,000 cookies per day.

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The interior of Ladurée (which we, unfortunately, were not allowed to take photographs of) is like a cotton-candy dreamworld! It is absolutely adorable and filled to the brim with pastel-colored boxes, which have become collectors items among macaron aficionados.

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Robin’s mom, Doina, and girlfriend, Steffi, and I opted for the bakery’s vanilla-flavored macaron variety and it was pretty much the best thing I have ever eaten! As someone who has sampled quite a few different macaron brands in her day, I can honestly say that Ladurée puts them all to shame! If there was a California branch, I wouldn’t be able to stay away! Thank God there is not, otherwise I would be in permanent diabetic shock. 😉 Amazingly enough, at most Ladurée outposts in other countries, the cookies are not made onsite, but flown in daily from Paris! That is not the case with the shop in Zurich, though, so Doina, Steffi and I were lucky enough to taste fresh cookies made right on the premises.

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Gossip Girl is hardly the first production to make use of Ladurée macarons. Not only were the cookies featured in Marie Antoinette . . .

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. . . but the confection actually formed the basis of the color palate for the entire 2006 movie. As stated in an article from London’s The Times Magazine, “At the start of pre-production, [director Sophia] Coppola handed [costume designer] Milena Canonero a box of pastel-coloured macaroons from the Ladurée pastry house. ‘She told me, “These are the colours I love”,’ recalls Canonero. ‘I used them as a palette.’” Love it!

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And while a few websites have stated that the final episode of Sex and the City did some filming at the Ladurée store in Paris, I scanned through the episode yesterday and did not see the bakery pop up anywhere.

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Be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for even more stalking fun! And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Swiss outpost of Ladurée, Blair Waldorf’s favorite macaron shop on Gossip Girl, is located at Kuttelgasse 17, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland. You can visit the official Ladurée website here.

Crumbs Bake Shop from “90210”

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Another location that I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to see while doing some stalking in Beverly Hills two weekends ago was Crumbs Bake Shop, the popular cupcakery which appeared in the Season 2 episode of fave show 90210 titled “What’s Past is Prologue”.  Crumbs has been a veritable institution in the Beverly Hills area for quite some time now and, being that I do love me some cupcakes, I am absolutely shocked that it took me this long to finally stalk the place, especially since it appeared on 90210 well over a year ago.  As I have said before, though, there are just too many places to stalk and not enough hours in the day to do so!  Thankfully, Crumbs was well worth the wait!

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The original Crumbs Bake Shop first opened on New York’s Upper West Side in March of 2003 and was founded by former lawyer Mia Bauer and her entrepreneur husband Jason.  Mia, who grew up on a farm in Israel, first started making coconut-flavored cupcakes for her family and friends when she was just a young child in the second grade.  When she made a batch for Jason, her then boyfriend, one day in 2002, an idea was born.  Mia left her law career behind shortly thereafter and, along with Jason, opened up her first cupcakery.  It became an instant success and the couple now owns over 35 stores in six different states, including one in Washington, D.C.  Today each shop offers over fifty different flavors of cupcakes daily, each of them made by hand.  Sadly, because photographs are not allowed inside of the store, I had to settle for snapping a few pics of the exterior only.

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The GC and I opted to try one of Crumb’s espresso-flavored cupcakes and, let me tell you, it was A-MA-ZING!  I am pretty picky about my cupcakes and I have to say that Crumbs serves up some fabulous ones!  Loved, loved, loved them!  Because the GC is a big fan of Howard Stern, he really wanted to try the Artie Lange cupcake, which was created by Artie on the air during an episode of The Howard Stern Show back in 2008 and consists of a vanilla cupcake filled with chocolate cream cheese, topped with vanilla cream cheese frosting, dipped in chocolate fondant, and then sprinkled with chocolate and vanilla sprinkles.  We thought it might just be a wee bit too rich, though.  Winking smile  Artie Lange is hardly Crumbs’ only celebrity fan.  Brooklyn Dekker, Andrea Bowen, Alyssa Milano, Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Jason Alexander (the actor from Seinfeld, not Britney Spears’ ex), Tori Spelling, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Garner, Jessica Biel, Katy Perry, Russell Brand, Chace Crawford, Justin Timberlake, Lauren Conrad, and my girl Jen Aniston have all been known to sample the sweet treats.  In March of 2009, Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise stopped into the Beverly Hills Crumbs to get their cupcake on.  And in September of 2008, Crumbs unveiled a limited-edition Cosmo-flavored cupcake especially for the DVD release party for Sex and the City: The Movie.  Love it, love it, love it!

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In the “What’s Past is Prologue” episode of 90210, Annie Wilson (aka Shenae Grimes), Naomi Clark (aka AnnaLynne McCord), and Erin Silver (aka Jessica Stroup) meet up at Crumbs to discuss Silver’s relationship with Teddy Montgomery (aka Trevor Donovan).

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It is while they are enjoying their cupcakes that Annie notices her ex-boyfriend, Jasper Herman (aka Zachary Ray Sherman), sitting at a nearby table and finally realizes that he is stalking her.

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Ironically enough, just around the corner from Crumbs Bake Shop is a Vietnamese restaurant named 9021Pho, which I think is just about one of the funniest names for a restaurant that I have ever heard!  The place cracks me up every single time I drive by it!

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Crumbs Bake Shop, from the “What’s Past is Prologue” episode of 90210, is located at 9465 Little Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills.  You can visit the official Crumbs’ website here.  9021Pho is located just around the corner from Crumbs at 490 North Beverly Boulevard in Beverly Hills.  You can visit the official 9021Pho website here.