LET THEM EAT CAKE
Aux Petits Delices offers award-winning French desserts
RADNOR » If you build it, they will come.
It’s been a field of dreams for owner Marqessa Gesualdi who has built a dessert paradise at Aux Petits Delices, 162 E. Lancaster Ave. in Wayne. Although the pandemic has slowed the pace of many businesses, this unique French bakery isn’t one of them. On most days, the phone rings off the hook and the socially distanced line for pickup extends down the block, with customers waiting to purchase everything from croissants, French pastries, and award-winning cakes, to handcrafted chocolates and house-made sorbet and gelato.
Many of the favorite items at Aux Petits Delices are hand crafted from a 33-year-old tradition. Founded in 1987 by acclaimed pastry chef
Patrick Gauthron, Aux Petits Delices features authentic French cakes, pastries, gelati, and candies, using recipes that have been tweeked to perfection. Gauthron was a native of France who studied throughout France’s culinary regions, learning the art of baking. When he moved to United States, he made the French pastries for the iconic former Philadelphia restaurant, Le Bec-Fin, before opening his own bakery in Wayne, which he successfully ran until selling three years ago. With an absolute passion for French confections, Chef Gauthron provided Main Liners with superior creations at Aux Petits Delices, desserts that would be difficult to find anywhere else.
After 31 years in business, Gauthron retired and sold the successful business in 2017 to pastry chef Marquessa Gesualdi who continues the longstanding traditions of her predecessor. With baking talent and skills to match the former owner, Gesualdi has not disappointed the bakery’s loyal customers who return again and again.
“I was really excited to own my own place,” Gesualdi said, smiling broadly, “But being a new business owner, I had a lot to learn. I think of my first year here as baptism by fire!”
Born and raised in Bristol, Bucks County, the hard-working Gesualdi remembers cooking as a child with her father and baking with her mother. Drawn to the kitchen, Gesualdi chose to go to Bucks County Technical High School to study Culinary Arts in 2002, where her inspiration for cooking and baking was honed into a passion and career path.
During her years at the school, she also worked as an intern at Philadelphia’s classical French restaurant, Deux Cheminees, owned by Chef Fritz Blank. Only 14 years old, the young baker worked on Saturdays, helping to prepare the restaurant for dinner service by doing both pastry and culinary.
After graduating in the top of her class in 2006 from the school’s Culinary Arts program, she further pursued her pastry career by attending Bucks County Community College’s three-year pastry apprenticeship program. While going to school fulltime, she also worked a full-time apprenticeship at Annie B’s Confections, a former commercial pastry production facility in Newtown. After three years at Annie B’s, she moved on to assist in opening the Parx Grill steakhouse at Parx Casino in Bensalem and stayed as pastry chef, where she drove the pastry program for two years. She also re
turned to her high school to substitute teach in the same baking program where she learned her own foundational skills.
Her greatest opportunity was yet to arrive when she applied as a pastry cook for Sbraga restaurant in 2011. Sbraga was the first of what would be five restaurants that she assisted in opening with Kevin Sbraga, winner of season seven’s Top Chef and owner of Philly’s top restaurant group, Sbraga Dining.
After five and a half years with Sbraga Dining, making it all the way to the top as corporate executive pastry chef, she chose to take a step back and work as pastry chef at Wm. Mulherin’s Sons, Philly’s Best New Restaurant of 2016. During that time, she reevaluated her next career move and chose to focus on creating her own path of being a pastry chef and entrepreneur.
“I grew tired of culinary chefs instructing a pastry chef how to make their pastries,” she remembered,
shaking her head.
In 2017, with her soon-to-be husband Bruce Solomon by her side, she finalized the purchase of Aux Petits Delices from Patrick and Nina Gauthron, continuing the tradition of a classical French patisserie on the Main Line.
“The purchase of a turn-key business like Aux Petits Delices seemed like a no-brainer at the time,” Gesualdi explained. “I liked the location and the fact that the business had long-standing clientele. I also really liked that it was a French oastry business because that is one of my specialties.”
Running her own business has not been without a few bumps in the road, Gesualdi confided. Being eager to showcase her own skills, the ambitious pastry chef tried to change the menu to more modern creative desserts and confections. She found her customers missed the traditional French pastries and other cakes and confections that Gauthron made and didn’t want their favorite desserts reinvented. Luckily, Gesualdi listened to her customers and brought back the tried and true, and business, she says, has boomed ever since.
“It’s one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned,” Gesualdi said. “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it!”
Although there was a slow two week period this past March due to the pandemic, Gesualdi said that business picked up quickly after that and has snowballed ever since. During the last six months, her baking team has worked nonstop to make everything from light and dark hand crafted chocolates and bon bons, breakfast pastries, petit fours and cookies, to customized birthday and wedding cakes, macaroons and eclairs. The bakery even offers gluten-free options and fresh cups of coffee, latte and espresso.
Each day, the huge blackboard inside Aux Petits Delices changes, with new offerings added daily. Her husband Bruce, with whom she recently celebrated her first anniversary, makes seven different varieties of French croissants.
On Sundays, the bakers offer freshly made donuts. During the holiday season, Aux Petits Delices is famous for its delectable yule logs, as well as its holiday chocolates. Last holiday season, the store sold over a thousand pounds of house-made
chocolates.
“You’ll never find anything in our cases that’s any more than a day or two old, because we never keep anything in the store that long,” the store owner said proudly. “Everything sells almost as soon as we bring it out front.”
The name “Aux Petits Delices” means small delights, but the variety of delights in the place is anything but small.
Gesualdi says she starts her day at 4:30 or 5 a.m. most mornings to make everything fresh for the day before customers arrive. She gets help from her husband, a chocolatier and another baker, all a part of the Aux Petits Delices team. During business hours, she prefers working the counter herself to get to personally know her customers and keep her pulse on what they like and what they want.
Gesualdi claims her creations are superior because she uses only real, non-artificial ingredients in every product, such as real butter, cream, chocolate, sugar and flour, and everything is made from scratch with no shortcuts.
In just three short years, Gesualdi’s
baking at Aux Petits Delices has garnered all kinds of “Best Of” awards, including designations for Main Line Today Magazine’s Best Pastry Chef and Best Croissant, and the 2019 Philadelphia Magazine’s Best of Philly award in the “Best Desserts” category.
Contactless, curbside pick-up is available, as well as in-store sales. Gesualdi takes orders for custom cakes and wedding cakes and also supplies restaurants with baked goods.
“In the past few years, I’ve learned a lot about running a successful business,” Gesualdi said with a smile.”I used to have one chef tell me what to do. Now, instead, I have hundreds of customers telling me what they like and what to do. And you know what? I’m more than okay with that!”