Pâté en croûte probably won’t appeal to those with timid taste buds, though as the food revolutionary Julia Child once said, “The memory of a good pâté will haunt you for years.”
Like blood sausage, raw oysters, gorgonzola cheese and chopped liver, pâté en croûte seems to be an acquired taste. The French in France and in French-speaking Canada discover it early in life. Still, you don’t have to be a Parisian on the Left or Right Bank or from Quebec City to make it a food of choice.
Now, thanks to Maison Nico — an épicerie and café on Montgomery Street in the Financial District of The City — Bay Area gourmets, gourmands and foodies are acquiring a taste for a dish that Wikipedia describes as a “pie or loaf filled with forcemeat.”
That definition doesn’t do it justice, much as the word “grocery,” which is often given as the English equivalent for épicerie, doesn’t do Maison Nico justice. Still, the shelves of Nico’s “house” offer jars with mustard, kiwi jam and more, and the café offers coffees and pastries, and there are homemade house specials for Thanksgiving.
Over the last year, local gourmets and foodies have made a habit of buying and enjoying the half-dozen or so different pâtés that Nicholas (aka Nico) Delaroque makes with love, the best ingredients and with tried=and-true techniques that are hard to beat.
Born and raised in France, Delaroque is going back to France in December to compete in the Championnat du Monde de Pâté Croûte, which will take place in Lyon where the dish is said to have been created centuries ago. With flying colors, Delaroque passed the first hurdle of the competition in Montréal in October with 14 other North American chefs in the running, a jury of scrupulous judges and a “foule de passionnés” — a passionate crowd — as a French Canadian website called it.
“In Montreal, I met other chefs, talked about the industry and the impact of the pandemic,” Delaroque said. “There’s a new generation of men and women who make charcuterie and a new generation of people who are rediscovering the pleasures of pâté.”
There’s no doubt Delaroque makes the best pâté en croûte in San Francisco. He’s also probably the only chef or professional cook to make it and no wonder. It takes two to three days from start to finish to assemble and bake. All the ingredients have to be measured and weighed precisely. There’s no guesswork or improvisation, though there’s a place for individual talent to shine and to be recognized.
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Delaroque’s award-winning pâté en croûte ($49 per pound for the chicken, duck and duck liver blend and $42 for the pork, apricot and chanterelle combination) He buys pork from Olivier Cordier, a jovial French-born butcher with a shop on Illinois Street in The City, who offers the highest quality custom cut meats. The artisan pâté en croûte that Delaroque will enter in the competition in Lyon includes spices, pig’s blood, apples and pistachios, which add color and crunch. The right texture is essential and so is the appearance. It has to look like a work of art.
New York Times food writer Florence Fabricant called Nico’s pâtés “savory mosaics of meats.” That might sound over the top, but it isn’t.
If pâté en croûte doesn’t appeal to everyone who sits down at a table with a fork in hand, the competition for the world championship isn’t for everyone who stands over a hot stove in a kitchen, stirs a pot or fries an egg. The ironclad rules, which are established by the Confrérie du Pâté Croûte (Brotherhood of Pie-Makers), stipulate that cooking teachers are barred from the competition and that it is “open exclusively to professionals from the food service industry (restaurateurs, bakers, pastry chefs, butchers, caterers) with a minimum of five years of professional experience.”
And that’s Delaroque. At 16, he landed his first job in a restaurant. “I liked the camaraderie in the kitchen,” he said. Ever since, he has cooked and prepared food professionally in Paris, the Alps, Corsica and San Francisco.
If making pâté croûte is so labor intensive and demanding, why does Delaroque do it? Perhaps because it is so demanding. Also, he enjoys the kitchen camaraderie, even though competition is involved and, after all these years, he continues to enjoy the taste of authentic pâté croûte that he acquired decades ago.
Delaroque remembers summers at Creuse, near the geographic heart of France, where 20 or so people from near and far sat around a table for “endless days of eating.” He adds, “It was about family, conversation and laughter.” Delaroque also remembers that his mother always had a flan for him when he came home from school. “It was my favorite treat,” he says. With food memories like these, it’s not surprising that he became a chef and he’s in the running for the title of best pâté en croûte maker en tout le monde.
A month or so before the final round of the competition in Lyon, Delaroque hadn’t worked out all the logistics. “It’s a work in progress,” he told me. He might build his pâté in San Francisco, he said, and finish it in France. Above all else, he doesn’t want to have trouble when he arrives in the country where he was born and raised and where he learned to appreciate the wonders of food. Delaroque plans to take a train from Paris to Lyon. For the competition, he’ll wear the customary chef’s white hat and white shirt. His wife, Andrea, and their daughter will stay at home, but their best wishes and the best wishes from the whole team at Maison Nico will travel with him.
