Vive la revolution!

JAKTHONG “MUMU” Ubolsootvanich came out of Chulalongkorn University’s communication-arts programme, but he also studied in Paris, and there discovered how marvellous pastry can be. No more thick, heavy buttercake for him.

Mumu’s family has a restaurant in Chiang Mai but he’d never lifted a spatula until he returned home and began trying to recreate those French pastries, relying on books by his favourite French chefs.

He spent three years adapting their techniques to create his own “traditional French” recipes and then started proffering the results in a corner of his mother’s popular restaurant, W by Wanlamun. His sweets were an immediate hit, and soon Mumu had a place of his own in Bangkok, Let Them Eat Cake.

“I’m a gastronome,” he says with pride. “I visited many famous patisseries in Paris and discovered how different the French cakes were from the typical American buttercake we’ve always had in Thailand. They vary a great deal in terms of flavour and texture.”

With family and friends, Mumu open Let Them Eat Cake last year on Sukhumvit Soi 20 and it proved a magnet for downtown office workers. Most of the items on the menu are his own favourites from Paris and they’re unavailable anywhere else in Bangkok.

Recently a second branch sprang up at Siam Center that takes its decor cues from “Les Miserables”, the sensational stage musical set in revolutionary Paris. The 77-square-metre cafe is starkly laid out to nearly industrial-grunge effect to capture the chaos of the revolution. Ceramic tableware hangs from the dark ceiling. The sofas are comfy, though!

Pastry needs its fresh cream and butter, but the French tend to ensure that it stays light regardless. Mumu imports all the ingredients, including French chocolate and even the milk to ensure that he can offer the real deal. Some of the seasonal fruit comes from overseas as well. 

“Every French pastry will have more than one flavour, aroma and texture,” he emphasises, “but it will also be rigidly traditional in form. They’re made individually, piece by piece, each one has a perfect composition in its own right. The pastry chefs use fruit and herbs from around the world to give their light cakes refreshing scents.”

The place is called Let Them Eat Cake, but unlike the infamous quotation from Queen Marie Antoinette, supposedly demonstrating her disdain for the starving citizens in revolt outside the palace, the Bangkok cafe spoils its diners for choice. Twenty different kinds of cake are on the menu every day. 

The rabble in Bangkok seem to prefer in particular the delectable, layered La Rose, sweet pink icing over an almond-dacquoise biscuit and stuffed with rose-petal bavaroise cream, jellied raspberry coulis and crystallised raspberry. A slice costs Bt145, which might get your revolutionary dander up, but treat yourself like a Sun King for once. It’s worth it.

Soft, yellow La Passion has the same almond-dacquoise along with passion-fruit mousse, jellied raspberry coulis and raspberry crisp for an even loftier Bt175. Add another Bt10 for St Honore Bellini – inverted puff pastry, caramelised choux pastry and peach compote, stuffed with Ceylonese tea.

A tad more modestly, the aromatic Le Cafe Maroc is a biscuit brownie filled with coffee mousse, mocha and coffee-flavoured milk-chocolate ganache for Bt165.

A must-try drink is the perfumed Chocolate Chaud, a pot of Parisian-style hot chocolate blended with Guanaja, Valrhona Grand Cru chocolate and a French chocolate seed that smells like red berries. It costs Bt180. 

For Mother’s Day, Mumu has a St Honore Ceremonie today and tomorrow. It’s made with puff pastry, caramelised choux pastry, wild-strawberry compote, strawberry cream and jasmine-tea Chantilly cream. 

 

 

RISE UP

>>The newer Let Them Eat Cake outlet is on the third floor of Siam Center. 

It’s open daily from 10 to 10. 

Call (02) 658 1606 or visit www.Facebook.com/LetThemEatCakeBkk.