Patisserie Miremont

Two European kings used to eat cake in this room. King Alfonso the Thirteenth of Spain came here for lunch. King Edward the Seventh of England came for tea. When your regular customers include actual monarchs, you're probably doing something right.

The patisserie was founded in eighteen seventy-two by Etienne Singher, a confectioner from Saint-Moritz in Switzerland. Joseph Miremont acquired it in eighteen eighty and gave it the name it still carries. What you see inside is essentially what those kings saw. The interior has a leather ceiling with Moorish-inspired decoration, ornate mirrors, and Berain-style interlaced panels featuring classical putti. Those are the little cherub figures. The whole room is a classified historic monument. You're eating pastry in a heritage site.

Their signature creation is the Paris-Biarritz. You might know the Paris-Brest, that ring-shaped choux pastry filled with praline cream, named after a bicycle race. The Paris-Biarritz takes that concept and spikes it with Espelette pepper, the Basque chili. It's sweet, it's creamy, and then there's this unexpected warmth from the pepper that builds at the back of your throat. It's a clever thing. A Basque twist on a French classic.

The location is perfect. Place Georges Clemenceau is the main square of Biarritz, and Miremont's terrace overlooks the whole scene. In the Belle Epoque era, this is where you came to see and be seen. The social currency of having a table at Miremont's was considerable.

This place has been serving continuously since eighteen seventy-two. Over one hundred and fifty years of pastry. Most businesses don't last a decade. Miremont has outlasted empires, two world wars, and every food trend since the nineteenth century.