The Indonesian pastry shop La Petite Manis has drawn crowds in Paris
La Petite Manis, a Franco-Indonesian pastry shop on Paris’s Rue Saint-Honoré, has attracted customers with pastries that combine French techniques with artisanal ingredients from Indonesia. After a Parisian food influencer mentioned the shop on social media, lines began to form outside, and during peak demand, the pastries sold out by 2:00 p.m., according to Channel NewsAsia.
La Petite Manis was founded by a group of Indonesian entrepreneurs, including celebrities Raffi Ahmad and Nagita Slavina. The pastry kitchen is led by Bali-based pastry chef Kevin Krisna Pratama, who has combined his classical French training with flavors familiar to him from his childhood in Indonesia.
The shop’s display case features croissants, shio-pan, and pain au chocolat made with chocolate from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Among the signature creations is “Cinnamon de Java,” a laminated brioche with Javanese cinnamon and gula jawa—Javanese palm sugar. Indonesian vanilla is also used in moti donuts and sesame croissants with a creamy filling.
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For his pain au chocolat, Pratama does not use pre-made chocolate bars. He blends chocolate with 58% and 70% cocoa content from the Indonesian manufacturer Adore Cacao and tempers it himself. At the same time, not all of his unusual flavor combinations were well-received in Paris: customers reacted with restraint to the shio-pan with seaweed and honey.
According to the chef, during peak hours he worked 18 hours a day and personally made up to 500 items, which could sell out by 2:00 p.m. The team plans to expand the menu once several employees currently awaiting visas arrive in France. Among the planned items are traditional Indonesian sweets such as martabak manis, kue cubit, pukis, cendol, and kue pancong, as well as layered French desserts made with pandan and kencang—the flower of the torch ginger.
