• Payard Patisserie & Bistro

  1032 Lexington Avenue near 73rd street, 212-717-5252; payard.com

  François Payard opened his eponymous confectionery in 1997. Before long, parents with refined palates began asking the third-generation pastry whiz to create birthday cakes that both children and grown-ups would enjoy. The result is the Notre Dame: a dense chocolate-mousse cake filled with vanilla cream and chocolate biscuits, decorated with a child’s favorite character—Winnie-the-Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, Simba, etc.—fashioned from marzipan. It costs $195 and serves twenty kids.

From the 2003 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine