For an afternoon tea I was going to host, I wanted some macarons. My former favored macaron shop was Mille-feuille in New York City, which I am unlikely to visit for leisure until after Small Sophie is old enough to visit NYC for a full day and not have her short legs get tired. I looked up macarons near me and discovered le macaron (521 Main St, Bethlehem, PA 18018), a macaron chain shop where I found good macarons, hard beignets, and okay meringues.
I called ahead to ask if I should order ahead or if I could just come in for only 18 macarons if I wanted all the flavors to be available. I was advised that unless I wanted special packaging, I could just come in and could likely expect all of the flavors to be present.
The only lady I could see working there had a pleasant attitude and helpfully had all the macaron details memorized.
They offered me a sample of the chocolate banana macaron. The bold, complementary flavors and the delicate texture of the cookie convinced me that I made the right choice in choosing this bakery for my upcoming tea party’s macarons.
The pricing for regular macarons ended up being $2.90 per macaron for quantities of 12 to 23. Had I bought 1-12, I believe the price would have been $3 per macaron.
According to the shop lady, their macarons should be eaten in 3-4 days. The macarons should be refrigerated if not eaten that day and put out for half an hour before eating. They need 4 hours to defrost if I buy a frozen macaron cake one. (Although their supply of regular macarons was visibly plentiful, some of the macaron cake flavors were not on display and still frozen.)
Le macaron also sells mini macaron cakes and larger 9” macaron cakes in exciting flavors like rose lychee raspberry. They are basically much larger macarons. I completely ate the s’mores mini macaron cake I had before taking pictures and thought it was rather good in terms of flavour balance and texture. Just be aware that these are difficult to cut cleanly.
Although le macaron did have a much larger variety of meringue cookie flavors than many other shops and a nice six-for-the-price-of-five deal where you do get to pick which six, the texture and taste were not exceptional. The flavor was balanced, so there was not a sense of too much or too little; that is a part that some places get dreadfully wrong.
I also took two hazelnut beignets. Both were rather hard and unpleasant. I think they were stale. Maybe it is because I went in the evening? (The beignets at La Française French Bakery in Breckenridge, Colorado, were much, much better, and I wished I had those.)
I would come back for their wide variety of good-tasting macaron flavors. I might try the beignets again, but earlier in the day. Google Maps claims a lot of other people liked the beignets at le macaron, so the other visitors must surely had significantly better ones than the ones I had.
And the tea party I hosted was as good as it can be for a group of 5-year-olds. In retrospect, I could have given the preschoolers Costco macarons and they might have appreciated that just as much.
