The Lost Lamb Patisserie: A Bit Of Paris In Stockbridge
Her day starts at 7 a.m. when she leaves her home to walk the third of a mile down Main Street, the same Main Street made famous by Norman Rockwell. But Claire Raposo doesn't have art on her mind. She’s thinking about the dough fermenting in her fridge and an on-again-off-again oven, not to mention the increase in demand for her signature flourless raspberry rose cakes that is putting a dangerous dent in her stock of fine-ground almond flour.
Rockwell’s images of Stockbridge lure visitors from all over the world craving communion with small town life. Rendered in painstaking detail, the quaint storefronts and even some of the vehicles are very much still intact on Main Street. Yet in November, the winds of change blew in a very authentic, very chic French pastry shop directly across the street from the front porch of the Red Lion Inn.
The proprietor of The Lost Lamb Patisserie was trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and is fluent in croissant baking techniques, culinary trends for all things vegan and gluten free, and the proper way to maintain a larder for no less than 20 flavors of macarons made daily in house. But what Raposo does not know is that she and Norman Rockwell have something in common: an undying, unrelenting appetite for detail and perfection.
Even though The Lost Lamb opened a scant two months ago and we are in the month of January — notoriously slow for restaurants and retail in the Berkshires — Raposo continues to add more staff and explains her dilemma with respect to the deep demand for things flourless.
“Flourless because everybody wants gluten free these days,” she says during a very brief break in the coffee rush that starts with locals at eight in the morning. Raposo, a slight, gamin figure with a persona not unlike that of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, plucks one of the cakes for me to try.
The delicious creation was clearly that of a person with the elan and grit to eschew regular college for a trade school in Paris. She nodded as I expressed pleasure and said the secret to the cake is the almond flour, “so much more fattening than regular flour but tasty because of the oil in the almonds — don’t tell anyone!”
A a crash in the kitchen ended our chat. Raposo and her team, three women all under age 24, were back to work, prepping for baking, making sandwiches, pulling espressos and singing, in unison, to the soundtrack of Mamma Mia! while Raposo held court at the counter, pointing to and describing the vast array of flourless raspberry cakes, éclairs, macarons, focaccia, croissants, pain au chocolat, and the tall cake with scalloped frosting over by the window.
As I waited, some workers from a construction site in West Stockbridge came to pick up sandwiches they'd ordered the day before — the ones Claire had made from freshly baked focaccia in between the coffee and lunch rushes. I realized there was something to this place besides the insanely complicated pastries.
The sandwich consisted of fluffy focaccia, prosciutto, gruyere cheese, greens and a balsamic glaze (which I later learned is spread on the bread in the morning while the bread is still hot) and was uncommonly good. This had to be the fanciest to-go sandwich Stockbridge has ever seen.
This latest entry in the lineup of Stockbridge's storybook shops is a very French, very inviting, very je ne sais quoi patisserie, proving Chef Claire is anything but lost.
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