In 1955, a young Polish pastry chef named Alexandre Micka arrived in Saint-Tropez and opened his shop on rue Clemenceau. On the set of "And God Created Woman", he served his brioche filled with cream, a direct echo of his grandmother's recipe from Czernichow. Brigitte Bardot tasted it, loved it, and said: "We must call it the tropézienne." You know the rest.
Seventy years on, the recipe remains a secret. The family never filed it deliberately, so it stays passed hand to hand, unrecorded. For the 70th birthday, the house is pulling out all the stops: a giant tropézienne 5 metres across will be served free on place des Lices on 12 May, from 11 o'clock, to anyone who passes by. There's also a photo exhibition tracing the bakery's story, and the sale (for once) of a few archive pieces: original posters, vintage tins, and even the mould Alexandre used for his first tarts.
Come early. In 1955, the village had a thousand people. Today, a thousand hungry souls will crowd round that table in minutes.
