Leunig’s Le Marché Café Brings Pastries and Picnic Staples to Shelburne

Is there something extra dazzling than a pastry case filled with fruit-topped tarts, chocolate-coated muffins and multicolored macarons?

Whereas many forego such sweets within the identify of New Yr’s resolutions, the Seven Days meals workforce continues its January custom of celebrating them. We welcomed 2021 with a narrative on doughnuts and 2022 with one on croissants and kouign amanns. This yr, we’re dedicating an entire month’s value of tales to bakeries.

To kick issues off, I headed to Shelburne’s latest French café and bakery: Leunig’s Le Marché Café. Opened in December within the former Harrington’s of Vermont house at 5597 Shelburne Highway, Le Marché has already introduced a little bit of je ne sais quoi to city — together with favorites from Burlington’s Leunig’s Bistro & Café and Petit Bijou kiosk.

Leunig’s chef-owner, Donnell Collins, lives in Shelburne and designed the café and bakery to be the sort of place she and her household needed on the town: someplace they may go for a takeout sandwich or a field of pastries. Since opening, Collins has been shocked by the quantity of people that wish to sit and have lunch.

“I do not know what I used to be considering at first,” Collins mentioned with fun.

The tables have been full after I went in round lunchtime on a weekday, with prospects having fun with salade Niçoise and jambon-beurre sandwiches fantastically ready by chef Amy Langford and her workforce. Langford has labored with Collins at Leunig’s for greater than 20 years, Collins mentioned, and the pair dreamed up the Shelburne house collectively.

“The Petit Bijou kiosk was actually the inspiration,” Collins mentioned. However the Church Avenue kiosk is tiny, and the Leunig’s kitchen — the place the pastries have been produced till now — is just too busy. At 3,000 sq. ft, Le Marché has loads of room and can quickly take over many of the baking for Petit Bijou. It’s going to additionally serve fashionable road meals snacks and contemporary sandwiches, soups and salads from the kiosk menu.

Entrance-of-house supervisor Conrad Osborne took my order for a turkey BLT ($14) and an Anjou pear soften ($12) — made with native chèvre, caramelized onions, child arugula and chai-infused honey from Ariel’s Honey Infusions on wheat bread. As I waited for my takeout order, the pastry case caught my eye; I added a fragile fruit tart ($6.50) and a bulging cinnamon roll ($4).

Pastry chef Rachel Cemprola began her pastry profession 11 years in the past at South Burlington’s Klinger’s Bread. She then baked in Colorado, Florida, Texas and Saratoga Springs, N.Y., earlier than “coming full circle” and returning to Vermont when her husband bought a job at Beta Applied sciences, she mentioned.

“Leunig’s has an ideal status, so I threw my résumé into the ring,” Cemprola mentioned. “Donnell has actually allowed me to take the reins.”

Collins shared with Cemprola inspiration from her journeys to France however has in any other case given the pastry chef and her workforce freedom to develop their very own intensive lineup of croissants, kouign amanns, scones, focaccia, almond crunch bars, tarts and gâteaux.

Cemprola’s pastry program honors the Champlain Valley, she defined, utilizing native substances to “emulate the scents, flavors and colours of Vermont’s seasons.” A lot of Le Marché’s creations are based mostly on native mountains, together with the maple-inflected Mt. Mansfield Tart — a tackle the standard Mont Blanc tart, named for the very best mountain on the French-Italian border. To date, the most well-liked is the chocolaty Mt. Philo Cake, Cemprola mentioned.

“Mount Philo is correct down the street from us, and anybody who’s carried out that hike is aware of it is just about steps all the best way to the highest,” Cemprola mentioned. The meringue topping on the cake mimics these wooden and stone stairs.

Subsequent time, I will purchase treats for a Mount Philo picnic.