Before they opened their patisserie in the Manchester suburb of Didsbury, in 2014, Alex Moreau and Kirsty McAlpine went to scope out the competition. It wasn’t Manchester they were measuring themselves against, or even London: the couple skipped all that and flew to Paris. Moreau, who grew up there, reels off a list of all the places they visited: “Ladurée, Pierre Hermé, Angelina, L’Atelier de l’Éclair…” McAlpine was exhilarated by the experience, Moreau exhausted. “She eats 20 macarons and she’s still OK, I eat five, I’m …” He mimics collapsing on the floor.
That challenge was nothing compared to getting Bisous Bisous up and running. The months leading up to opening day were spent obsessively testing and tweaking their recipes – the macarons took a long time to perfect. Then the realities of the patissier’s life began to kick in. “The first two years were tough,” Moreau admits. It wasn’t just getting up to bake at 1am, or the fact that they had a young child to look after and another on the way – it was also tricky getting customers to recognise the value of their products. “In Paris, it’s different,” says Moreau, “but here people were like, ‘I can get four eclairs for £1 in Tesco.’”
That’s clearly no longer an issue. When I visit Moreau and McAlpine at their tiny premises at 3pm on a Saturday, the display cases are almost completely cleared out. I manage to nab a raspberry religieuse, a choux pastry said to resemble a nun, and then head downstairs where the couple ply me with exceptional macarons.
This isn’t their first food venture in the area. When Moreau moved here six years ago, having met McAlpine in Germany, he got a job managing a steakhouse in the centre of Manchester. It “wasn’t doing very well”, according to Moreau, so he called up his dad – the head of research and development at one of the biggest catering companies in France – and said: “Listen, you’ve had enough of your job, let’s make the owner an offer.” His father duly came over, later followed by Moreau’s mother and brother, and they relaunched the restaurant as 63 Degrees, which is still going strong.
Moreau worked there for three years, with McAlpine pitching in “on the paperwork side”. In the end, the 18-hour days proved too much. “I didn’t see my first boy growing up that much, because of work,” Moreau says. “Then the idea of a patisserie came up. It’s a much better lifestyle.”
Of course, Bisous Bisous isn’t without its stresses and strains. Even though they’ve hired other people now to do the baking and manage the shop, business is ramping up. They’ve just launched a stall at Altrincham Market, six miles to the southwest, and have installed heavier-duty baking equipment at the back of the Didsbury shop to cope with increased production. Sales to cafes and restaurants around Manchester are booming – they work with nearby restaurant Hispi, whose owner Gary Usher tells me that “finding a traditional French patisserie in West Didsbury was like finding a pot of gold”.
More Bisous Bisous are planned, with the centre of Manchester a prime target, along with Edinburgh (McAlpine grew up in Yorkshire but has strong ties to Scotland).
Looking back on those lofty patisseries they visited in Paris, how do they feel their own shop compares now? Would it match the best of them?
“Oh yeah,” says Alex without a flicker of hesitation. “Completely. We have lots of French people coming here who are very picky, just like me, and they think our cakes are stunning. As I said, we’ve been to lots of places, and even the best ones we’re very close to – if not just as good.”
