Crississippi, Switzerland and Michelin 3-star pastries

Crissier, population 7,900, is a suburb of Lausanne (where I live) and hosts a yearly music festival. What kind of music? Mississippi blues. Get it? Combining Crissier with Mississippi gets Crississippi. Every time I cycle past the sign it makes me chuckle. 

What Crissier is famous for is not the music festival but, this building. It houses Restaurant L'Hotel de Ville. In French, "Hotel de Ville" means city hall. It's Crissier's old city hall. Since 1992 this restaurant has managed to snag the coveted three Michelin stars every year. Three stars is the highest number of stars awarded. It's a big deal with only 132 restaurants around the world garnering this honor. In the USA 13 restaurants have three stars, Switzerland has three while France with 30 has the most. 

Franck Giovannini, chef/owner, recently took over. Jeez, he's got some big shoes to fill as the three previous chefs/owners managed for 30 straight years to win top honors. Heaven forbid he screws up and the restaurant gets demoted to two stars or less. Giovannini has 85 employees helping him.

I wonder if visiting all 132 three star Michelin restaurants around the world is on anyone's bucket list? It's doable but, scheduling might be the biggest obstacle. Here at this place you have to book three months in advance for dinner and six weeks for lunch. 

Every year various golf magazines come out with their list of "100 Best Golf Courses in America". I wonder if anyone out there is trying to play all 100 courses? That would be really tough as most of the courses are private. It would take a lot of bribe money to get it done.

I remember back in the early 1990's reading about some guy going around the USA trying to visit all 140 Starbucks. Try doing that today. Did you know there are now more than 33,000 Starbucks around the world? 

Which brings me to this boulangerie/patisserie located directly across the street from Restaurant L'Hotel de Ville. I've been cycling past the place for years and the past five or so years it sat empty and forlorn. Imagine my surprise a few months ago when I saw it reopened. What's more, it's owner is none other than Restaurant L'Hotel de Ville! 

Man oh man, the pastries are dangerously good. 

A smattering of cakes.

This is my favorite item: pecan brownie. This is a photo of two of 'em. I like my brownies moist and fudgy/chocolatey. These have pecans inside, along with caramel coating on top, along with more pecans, little carmel balls and then the tiny chocolate wafer plus, there's also something crunchy--kind of like crispy rice.