Filial Piety Awareness Day

Mother’s Day — that annual festival of last-minute teleflorism — is once again upon our sorry selves. It is not the worst Hallmark Holiday of the year, of course. That honor would go to Father’s Day, for which there is not even an accepted, go-to, eleventh-hour gift alternative. Still, it is a celebration we’d do well to drop from the calendar.

I’m sure there are a few mothers deserving of praise for their efforts, including (I grudgingly admit) the one pictured above. Possibly some fathers too, at least hypothetically. Still, I’ve been to too many confessional dinner parties with people claiming to be children of parents to believe that there are so many truly outstanding (or even passably competent) child-rearers as to justify a whole day in their collective honor. (And a prime spring weekend slot, to boot!)

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The Best

The Bakery in Auroville makes the best Pain au Chocolat in the world. Period.

I say this after having done decades of research in Paris. My work has not been as methodical or exhaustive, perhaps, as the arrondissment-by-arrondissment croissant sampling performed by my friend, Rich Pekelney; but it has been reasonably extensive.

It is not that the dough has the diaphanous flakiness of that little bakery on the Rue de Fourcy or uses a chocolate of the silky richness of the place on Rue Saint Louis En L’Ile. On both counts, the Auroville pains au chocolat rate acceptably, not superbly. The true measure of greatness of these pastries is largely a function of location.

There may be a place on this earth in greater need of high-quality pain au chocolat than South India; but, with all due respect for authenticity and origin, Paris is not it; and I’ve yet to discover it. By meeting this serious necessity with deftness and abundance, The Bakery at Auroville wins my vote for the best pain au chocolat in the world.