Les Delices De Paris

Walking into Les Delices de Paris is like walking into another world: one of pure sensation, of cream and sugar, fine flour, yeast and butter and salt. The little pastry shop occupies what could be the most inconvenient location on Leetsdale, but on its best days, this is the best-smelling spot in the entire city of Denver. The warm, bright, well-scrubbed interior is inviting, but it’s the menu (such as it is) that brings people back. It reads like poetry, like love: brioche and charlotte, tuiles, meringuette and fruit tartellette. In a box above the bakery case are piles of croissants and a jar of meringues; below are simple boxes of beautiful, handmade almond macaroons, Linzer tortes, the hands-down greatest citron key-lime tarts ever made, black-and-white Napoleons with just a delicate crackle, eclairs with a chocolate glaze so dark that light can’t escape. If you’re lucky (or early), there might still be bread left on the rack by the door when you arrive. Freaks for French pastry can find no better heaven in Denver than Les Delices de Paris.