Hungarian confectioner's macarons recognised by prestigious French award

There are so many different lists of the best restaurants in the world that it's impossible keep up with them all. La Liste was founded in 2015 by Philippe Faure who used to be the CEO of Gault & Millau. They started by creating a list of a thousand restaurants around the world, but now they list 20,000, and they also rate pastry shops separately.

Whereas Michelin still uses inspectors in disguise to map the best restaurants in the world, and others consult local experts to find out which are the best restaurants, La Liste seeks to combine these methods. They use a data processing algorithm that aggregates the results of social restaurant review sites such as Trip Advisor and Yelp, press coverage, testimonials and rankings of major restaurant guides.

This year, Dóri Szalai and Chez Dodo have been included among the top five pastry shops recommended by La Liste. One reason why this is a huge accopmolishment is because macarons are perhaps one of the most difficult French sweets to make, requiring a great deal of skill, routine and excellent ingredients.

Since recently, Chez Dodo macarons are no longer only available near the Basilica in Budapest, but also in Vienna, where they can be found at the recently opened croissant bar Freya. Although the focus at Chez Dodo has always been on macarons, they sometimes offer other French desserts as well, for example more sophisticated versions of the much-derided (in Hungary -TN) mignons, as well as canelés, financiers and madeleines.