1789 Café by Cyrille Courant

Éclairs from the morning bench

Chocolate is filled, pastry is cut, and Cyrille Courant, Pastry Chef at 1789 Café by Cyrille Courant in Da’an, Taipei, keeps the work French at the bench. Courant came to pastry after a first apprenticeship as a cook, then extended his training with a CAP in pâtisserie, chocolate and ice cream. The route began in the Val de Loire, where he had helped his father in the family restaurant, and widened through hotel and restaurant kitchens in Europe and Asia, including the Ritz Carlton in Wolfsburg, The Landmark and Claridge’s Hôtel in London, and the Grand Hyatt in Shanghai. In 2013, after more than 15 years of travel and service, he and his wife Sabine founded 1789 Café Pâtisserie in Taipei. The name carries a French date, but the daily claim is quieter: pastries, chocolates, macarons and viennoiseries made on site, with Courant still named as the chef at the station.

A pastry case built in French grammar

The program is pastry first. Coffee, tea and hot chocolate sit beside the cakes, not above them; the café does not present itself as a specialty coffee bar or tea house. Its discipline is the French case: éclairs, handmade chocolates, macarons, viennoiseries and classic cakes, with desserts such as Tarte Tatin, Mont Blanc, Opéra Cake and Caramel St. Honoré forming the visible vocabulary. The house describes the products as made daily by Courant using traditional French techniques, and that matters here because the menu does not lean on full meals or savory distraction. Butter, cream, chocolate, choux, laminated dough and fruit do the work. The measure is not spectacle, but repetition: the same fillings set cleanly, the same glaze held at the right shine, the same slice of Opéra showing its layers without needing explanation.

Past the salon, into the room

The Renai branch asks for a small act of attention before the pastry appears. On the quiet alley in Da’an, the entrance is shared with 剪單沙龍; guests pass the salon and find the café to the right. Inside, the room is compact and calm, closer to a patisserie counter with seats than to a general café built for long occupation. The neighborhood does some of the softening. Trees and residential quiet sit outside, while the counter keeps the focus on the case and the hands behind it. Pastries can be eaten with tea or coffee in the room, or carried away; either way, the work begins at the bench, not at the table.

Ten years into the same argument

The house marked its 10-year milestone across 2023 and 2024, thanking customers for supporting both traditional French pastries and newer dessert forms. Courant has also been admitted to Relais Desserts International, a global association of 100 pastry chefs, placing this small Taipei café inside a wider pastry lineage without changing the scale of the work. The next proof remains daily and local: an éclair, a Mont Blanc, a box of chocolates leaving Renai Road.