East Austin’s Rocheli Patisserie Brings Haute Couture to French Pastry: The Garcia family weathers multiple storms to open their paean to luxury – Food
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Rocheli Patisserie owners Nelly and Linda Garcia (Photo by Jana Birchum)
What could be more opulent French than morphing the sugary-sweet aesthetic of Marie Antoinette into the understated chic of Coco Chanel to create a range of luxurious Sunday morning pastries? Not a lot, to be honest.
But that’s all it takes. When they opened their East Austin bakery, Nelly and Linda Garcia knew that the secret to coveted luxury is that it only takes a touch of imaginative indulgence to create a cultural phenomenon. Instead of simple croissants, eclairs and Napoleon pastries, the two sisters baked the idea of the elegance of the old world, the tea rooms of the pre-war period and the romantic rendezvous in the ambience of the Rocheli Patisserie.
“I think the goal is to be the Chanel of the patisserie world,” confides Linda, who says that her and her sister’s preferred indulgence is a voluminous rosé raspberry ispahan macaron paired with a flute Blow. “So it’s commonplace in the sense that you’re welcome every day, but I think we aspire to be that luxury cafe.”
While Coco Chanel has made a name for itself by allowing women to escape from everyday life through subtle splendor, Rocheli takes the idea of inhabiting the elite of society back a few centuries.
Rococo extravaganza tumbling out of the neighborhood pastry shop. Every time the glass door swings on its hinges, classic French melodies float over the threshold, which leads into a pastel-colored interior with gold accents and is crowned by a pastry display case that is itself an oeuvre d’art.
Rocheli Patisserie is a family affair. The mother of the Garcia sisters, Rosa Nelly Caballero, is a cook who has always dreamed of owning her own café. The dream didn’t come true for years, but Rosa kept hope alive by creating the Rocheli name decades before starting a store. “‘Ro’ stands for pink for me and my mother. The ‘Che’ is for my brother Checo, who is also the same name as my father. And then the ‘Li’ for Linda,” explains Nelly. “So my mom just put all the family’s initials together and she loved the name.”
With a professional cook as a mother and a name already chosen, Nelly grew up with the idea of having a family bakery that was well established, but neither she nor Linda considered making a living until it happened by accident.
It is undeniable that the combined talents of the family members have the effect, the craftsmanship.
While dreaming of a career as a writer, Nelly began taking baking and cake decorating classes “just for fun”. As a kid of the Internet age, of course, she began to get her creations online, and it wasn’t long before Nelly began receiving unsolicited online orders. At first she gave away her cakes, but she quickly realized that she could turn her hobby into a profession. Not long after this revelation, her sister Linda joined the team, followed by her mother.
“We can all do anything, but I think we specialize in what we’re good at,” Nelly said recently on a Tuesday night at her shop in East Austin, off Chicon Street. Nelly says she’s the production manager who can handle even the biggest holiday job, while her mom is the central recipe developer. She attributes the perfect implementation of the Rocheli aesthetic to her sister Linda. Scroll through the bakery’s Instagram feed – frame by frame of the theatrical propping of colored fondant layers to edible sculptures – and the impact, the artistry of their combined talents is undeniable. From at least an outsider’s point of view, it is clear that the Monterrey, Mexico family is an excellent counterbalance to making complex French pastries on a large scale.
Photo by Jana Birchum
The two sisters sit at an intimate table laden with pastries, discussing the structural advantages of the ratio of nut to wheat flour in a macaron and joking back and forth about how to combine the zeitgeist of the winter holidays with the flavors of matcha and vanilla cake. You decide that the shade of green used in Japanese tea works is a nod to the seasonal green. During the conversation, the kitchen staff tinker with a tray with cupcakes in various stages of expansion and a sample of the icing recipes from Mama Rosa.
The French Viennoiserie is a demanding art. But hard work is no stranger to the Garcia sisters. The dream of transforming Rocheli from an online cake shop into a French brick bakery has long since come true. For years the duo searched for a storefront, and in 2020, after months of navigating the city’s approval bureaucracy, they succeeded – only to bring the world to a standstill.
“I remember it was on March 8, before the pandemic, when we got the permits to start. And then, like two days later, everything was closed,” says Nelly.
This rocky start was just the beginning. Nelly added that when things finally came together this year and orders started coming in for the new opening date in early 2021, the Snow Cup also hit. Once again, the sisters had to give up their opening plans and weather another storm. Finally, Rocheli opened its doors at the end of February 2021.
While both Nelly and Linda are now laughing at the hurdles they had to overcome to open their dream café, they acknowledge that their success today is directly down to the great support from pastry enthusiasts – a passion shared by people from all over the world attracts.
After several visits to the store, it is clear that every day there is a European café character of the 20th. A range of languages creates the warm hum that pervades the room and invites customers to sit down. Germans, Russian, French, Vietnamese and English stumble upon each other as towers of precisely cut tea sandwiches on tiered platters arrive at the tables for afternoon tea.
Of course, Americans visit the cafe and enjoy the sweet treats made from family recipes, but there are also plenty of regular French customers who, according to Nelly, come to enjoy the tips and tricks they have learned from French chefs. The Rocheli croissant with its fruity glaze is a prime example of the bakery’s French flair. “It was a French chef who taught us, and he said, ‘This is how we lived in France when we were kids,’” explains Nelly.
Even the most seasoned sugar lovers will smile at the sumptuous pastry altar built by the Garcia sisters. The gaudy macarons with their festive motifs are only an indication of the heights to which this whipped aesthetic rises here. At Rocheli, extravagance is commonplace; Splendor, pure routine. Carefully stacked layers of chiffon meringues lie leisurely on colorful cakes. Rows of uniform pedestals support steps of croissants, the twisted shapes of which reflect the movements of the baker’s hand, which has carefully shaped them. Take a look at the special selection of macarons for dogs and suddenly Instaworthy dreams come true.
Rocheli is certainly not an everyday occurrence, but an experience for everyone. Whether it’s crème brûlée, sparkling conversation or a modest cupcake, you’re looking for something extraordinary. Of course, come as you are, but when you leave you won’t be what you used to be. You will feel chic.
Rocheli pastry shop
1212 Chicon St., # 102
rocheli.com
A version of this article appeared in print on December 10, 2021 with the headline: Let Them Eat Cake
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https://www.austinchronicle.com/food/2021-12-10/east-austins-rocheli-patisserie-brings-haute-couture-to-french-pastry/
