La troisième place
Our founder, Julien Hervet, grew up in France's Loire Valley — a childhood among castles, goat cheese, and the wines of the river, where his love affair with the vineyard began. In 2003 he crossed the Atlantic for an MBA, and by 2007 he had landed in Seattle, building a career at Microsoft on the Xbox team.
But something was missing. In France, there is a third place between work and home: the café where the waiter knows your order, the boulangerie where the morning baguette is a ritual rather than an errand, the table where an hour passes without anyone glancing at a watch. It is not about luxury. It has never been about luxury. It is about being known. On the Eastside, Julien found extraordinary energy and extraordinary people — and nowhere to simply sit and be.
So he decided to build the place he missed — and to build it without a single shortcut.
First, the ingredients: Cépaé
It began, as it often does, with wine. Julien could not find the small-batch French bottles he loved in Washington — or could not find them without layers of middlemen and prices to match. So in 2015 he did something few enthusiasts would dare: he obtained his own importer's license and founded Cépaé, working directly with French winemakers he knew personally. Fewer hands between the vineyard and your glass; honest wine at an honest price.
Cépaé became the answer to a larger question, too — the one that defeats most French bakeries abroad: the ingredients. French bread tastes the way it does because of French flour. French pastry behaves the way it does because of French butter. There is no substitute, and we refuse to pretend otherwise. What began as a supply line became a maison of its own: today Cépaé pours 150 wines by the glass in Bellevue and fills the shelves of our épicerie fine — where we were proud to be the first shop to offer Pierre Hermé macarons outside Pierre Hermé's own stores.
Then, the table
In 2018, we opened our first dining room in Bellevue. From the first morning, we did things the way a true Parisian café does: you take your seat, and we come to you. No counter to queue at, no name shouted across the room, no pressure to surrender your table. Porcelain, not paper. Service as a craft, practiced daily.
The Eastside answered. One house became four — Bellevue, Mercer Island, Kirkland, and our comptoir on the Microsoft campus — each a working boulangerie and pâtisserie, each holding to the same standards, the same welcome.
Before dawn, every day
Everything we serve is made by hand, by our own bakers and pâtissiers, every morning — in our Atelier de Production on Mercer Island and our full-scale bakery on the Microsoft campus, where the morning production can be watched from the comptoir itself. Nothing arrives by truck from somewhere else. Nothing is finished from frozen.
It is slower this way, and more expensive, and we would not do it any other way. One hundred percent French flour and butter — not as a flourish, but as a founding principle.
La cuisine
A maison is only as good as its kitchen, and ours has been led by remarkable hands. Our founding executive chef, Orphée Fouano, trained in the great Parisian houses — including the Hôtel Plaza Athénée alongside Christophe Michalak and under the school of Alain Ducasse — and shaped the pâtisserie and menus that first made L'Experience Paris a name on the Eastside. We remain grateful for the foundation he built.
Today the kitchen is led by executive chef Johannes Bonin — a native of Lyon with thirty years in pastry, whose journey has carried him through the kitchens of Paris, London, and St. Moritz, to the executive pastry chef's post at Dubai's Burj Al Arab, and onto the floor of the Pastry World Cup in 2011. His mentor is Pierre Hermé — a fitting thread for a maison that was the first to carry Hermé's macarons outside his own stores — and his work has drawn praise from Hermé and Alain Ducasse alike.
Since joining us in 2025, chef Bonin has taken charge of the entire culinary experience of the maison — every viennoiserie and pâtisserie, brunch at every house, and dinner in Bellevue. His arrival was announced by the Sahar, his first creation for L'Experience Paris — pistachio, apricot, and orange blossom, inspired by the flavors of Dubai — which promptly became an internet sensation and lives on today as one of our made-to-order Grands Desserts. His current collection carries the same signature of bold ideas mastered with classical precision: the Charlotte, a celebration of red fruits on spéculoos and Dulcey biscuit; the Giulia, pistachio financier under a whisper of wasabi cream and fresh grapefruit; the Maya, matcha shortbread beneath pineapple and passion fruit. Everything in our case, and everything on our tables, is his.