About Madame Charlie
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Our love for Basque gastronomy

As a family we fell in love with the Basque Country with its rugged and beautiful coastlines and hinterlands, people and its wonderful food and wines.

Basque gastronomy is unique and authentic. Pure, unique and simple, yet refined and elegant: Its cuisine uses the intrinsic flavors and structure of its local high quality produce to their fullest. Resembling the region's nature, people and culture.

Whether it is its cured hams, smoked anchovies, sheep's cheeses, wonderful pastries or anything with espelette pepper jam. Or its charcoal grilled Txuleta and Rodaballo. Or its Txakoli, Sagardi or Rioja Alavesa reds (and some whites!) You can wake us up at night for all of these.

What we love most is sampling the authentic foods of its many gastropubs and bakeries. Spending nights in San Sebastian’s old town’s narrow streets and diving into a charcoal grilled steak at bar Nestor, having a pintxo at Ganbara and ending at La Viña for their delicious burnt cheesecake (which we as parents pair with a well-aged Pedro Ximinéz 🙂). Or having a lazy afternoon at the beach in Biarritz and indulging in a fine collection of local macarons and mini Gâteau Basque of Maison Adam.

Authentic and pure pastries

Basque pastries present Basque cuisine to the fullest: often only a handful of ingredients, simple recipes and unsophisticated composition. Yet, the pastries are unbelievably rich in structure, elegance and flavors.

Whether it be burnt cheesecake, muxu or macaron, pantxineta or a pastel vasco - they are all uncomplicated pastries, yet incredibly mouthwatering delicious.

Each basque province, city and pastelería (pâtisserie) have developed  their own speciality or recipes of these traditional pastries. Most recipes are made for many centuries, handed over within families generation, by generation.

Baked with love

Bart has always been a fanatic homebaker and Charlie loves to help. Bart made his first basque burnt cheesecake back in 2017 as dessert for our grand family Christmas dinner. Everybody loved it. And being back in Biarritz and San Sebastian as a family in recent years, we refell in love with Basque country, its food, wines and, especially, its heavenly pastry. And decided that we must bring the delicacies to Amsterdam and started our own Basque artisan bakery.

We bake traditional Basque pastries with love and sometimes with our own twist. We use local, high quality and organic ingredients as much as we can. We use free-range eggs and organic dairy where possible, also for additives used. We prepare all fillings, jam and pastes ourselves.

We pair our pastries with a carefully curated selection  sweet wines, liquours and ciders from the wider Basque region (oeps.. and sherry too). We sometimes use these as an ingredient in our pastries offering wonderful and seameless dessert combinations with the drink itself.

We hope you taste and enjoy our passion.

With love and muxus (kisses) - Charlie and Bart