October 9-15, 2003

food

Show Me the Honey

FRUITS OF LABOR: Miel's fresh fruit tart (center), with Key West white chocolate mousse (left) and Miel Dome (back). Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Patissier Robert Bennett fashions Miel's new Center City branch as a hive of sweet creativity.

by Elisa Ludwig

Behind their glass cases the marzipan animals, gold-stamped chocolates, bite-size Linzer tarts and spun sugar nests are a perfect, miniature universe where the eye and the taste bud meet and sigh in contentment. To look at the gorgeous handiwork, it’s obvious that Robert Bennett has an eye -- and a painstaking patience -- for detail.

That may explain why the opening of the second retail location of Miel, his renown and well-loved patisserie, slated to open at 17th and Latimer streets, has been continually delayed. Bennett has being paying rent on the new store since March. But last week, the windows were still covered over with "Coming Soon" paper and bright orange zoning notices, which means an October opening is looking more and more like a November opening. There are serious considerations, both architectural and confectionary, in the undertaking, and Bennett does not take them any more lightly than his operas or madeleines.

Bennett emerges in his pastry whites from the kitchen at his Cherry Hill store and settles into an upholstered chair in the tastefully lavish bridal consulting room. It is midmorning; he has already been working for four hours, but he has an easygoing manner that belies his steely drive to build an empire of baked goods. Bennett explains his occupational destiny with two facts: "My father was a chemist and I have a sweet tooth."

After training at the New England Culinary Institute, he worked at Le Bec-Fin for 14 years, and remains deeply grateful to Georges Perrier for giving him the creative and financial support to develop his craft. "Georges was like a father to me. He spared no expense. If I wanted $200-a-pound Tahitian vanilla he would get it for me."

Over the years Bennett has studied patisserie and chocolate making in France. There’s a story about his 3-year-old daughter -- the one where she refused a Hershey’s Kiss and said that she only liked chocolate from Daddy or La Maison du Chocolat -- that suggests that the refinements to his technique have not gone unnoticed.

In the late 1990s, once the pastry and chocolate making at Le Bec-Fin had grown to near-corporate scale, Bennett became more interested in starting his own business, preferring, as it were, to be the boss of the corporation. In 2000, Bennett left the restaurant and came to Cherry Hill to open his own storefront. The $1.5-million facility, replete with chocolate room and cutting-edge European equipment that seems capable of doing everything short of shopping for ingredients, was 15 months in the making. "I’d come in here and look at the floor plans, and redo the lines on the floor and just meditate." Miel, of course, is French for honey and Bennett’s finishing touches were pillows embroidered with the Napoleonic bee, the small-statured leader’s symbol of rule, and a gilded bee-shaped door handle.

Clearly, Bennett's vision is all encompassing: Miel has its own specially roasted brand of coffee, handmade gelatos, sorbets and ice creams, jams, spreads and a whole line of fresh-baked breads. Even the scraps here are worth buying: Bennett turns leftover bread into packaged croutons and sells bags of vanilla sugar for home pastry chefs. He gives a tour of the store, offering a spoonful of peach sorbet made from local peaches, a sip of house-made jasmine iced tea and a bite of premium chocolate along the way. He pauses in the chocolate room to show how the pound assortments of truffles, caramels and coins are boxed in lovely black-and-gold packaging, later to be sold for $45 a pop. The chocolate prices have gone up, he explains ruefully.

The new store, at 1,050 square feet, will be strictly retail. Bennett considered adding tables for customers but after visiting a few New York patisseries, he decided the order-and-sit model was not ideal. I didn't want people to be sitting there eating with someone else's ass in their face. All the food is produced in the Cherry Hill store and will be transported to 17th Street -- very, very carefully. Bennett already has a firm foot in the retail business, selling his unique ice creams to Bassetts, his breads and pastries to Food Source supermarkets and his chocolates to several hotels. He has baked for Ronald Reagan, the Belgian national soccer team, Prince Andrew and the employees of Commerce Bank. At the opening of the National Constitution Center last summer, Tom Brokaw gave him the thumbs-up on his cake.

The new store will give him the opportunity to expand his retail base and get back into the city, which he says he misses. I'll be more comfortable in the city, more in my element.

Still, 17th and Latimer will be a slight change of pace from the affluent cradle of Village Walk, where New Jersey housewives lunch on Bobby Chez's crabcakes, and mince from their spa treatments to high-end shopping to the sounds of pumped-in New Age music. At his new location, the outdoor soundtrack will be SEPTA bus squeaks and megaphone abusers.

Bennett, who regularly puts in 12-hour days, has an eye on further expansion. He is actively looking to open up a Miel in Princeton, and is also considering a storefront kiosk in Old City. If there is a limit to the demand for mille-feuille, he has not let it interfere with his long-term business plan. You really have to plan to succeed, he says. And he's not willing to give up his high standards, store-opening delays be damned. You can't make sugar from shit.