INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business

INNOVATOR
PHOTO BY FRANK AYMAMI
Sucré pastry chef Tariq Hanna, left, and CEO Joel Dondis opened the high-end sweets boutique on Magazine Street in April 2007.
Sucré
Key innovation: a high-end, designer sweets boutique
Where they’re based: New Orleans
Top executive: Joel Dondis, CEO
Year introduced: 2007
2007 sales: about $1 million, excluding Internet sales
CAPTURING THE RICH, multi-layered spirit of New
Orleans in confection requires the ornate interpretation
of sugar that is Sucré, a designer sweets boutique at 3025
Magazine St.
Presenting such a platter in post-Hurricane Katrina
New Orleans is the innovation of restaurateur Joel Dondis
and executive pastry chef Tariq Hanna, on the scene since
April 2007.
The edible artistry requires the creativity, climate control,
engineering and marketing Dondis and Hanna have
achieved.
Sucré, which Dondis calls a “department store of confection,”
offers handmade chocolates, pastry, ice cream
dishes and drinks, with sandwiches, salads, wine and
non-alcoholic beverages.
“Nobody had ever done this,” Hanna said. “People
have made chocolate, people have made breads, people
have made ice cream. No one has taken every facet of the
pastry industry and rolled it into one. A city and a state
that has the greatest food heritage in the entire country
deserved to have something like this.”
The creation of designer chocolates in New Orleans’
humid climate is the shop’s most unique undertaking, Dondis
said, as the humidity must be kept at 45 percent to properly
manufacture the confection. To achieve this, Sucré purchased
a tempering and enrobing machine from Germany and
installed special cooling, ventilation and heating systems.
For more than a year, Sucré made its entire line of
treats in a 650-square-foot kitchen on site. The company’s
growing success includes adding a 5,000-squarefoot
production facility in a Louisiana Enterprise Zone
scheduled to open in October and a second store in an
undisclosed location.
Hanna’s artisanal chocolates incorporate New
Orleans’ unique gumbo of flavors by using local products
and creating new renditions of local favorites.
His Blange is a white-chocolate-ganache take on
bananas Foster creator Paul Blange’s famed dessert, with
fresh banana and a smidgen of rum. The caramel and
milk ganache Hanna calls Avery is topped with a bit of
salt from the mines at Avery Island. Chicory is in the milk
chocolate Magnolia. And the fleur-de-lis-shaped
Meuniere, also marketed as the Saints collection, blends
brown butter and toasted almond.
On display in Sucré’s window is a replica of a pot of
seafood gumbo — a completely edible sweet layer cake —
Hanna created at the request of a local groom for his big
day.
Dondis said Sucré completes New Orleans’ rightful
image among romantic getaways.
“I think New Orleans has name (ambience) like New
York or Paris. Many people love New Orleans in that way,
and I think it’s a void in our market,” he said.•
— Diana Chandler
32A 2008 Innovator of the Year