Debauve & Gallais, chocolatier on the rue des Saints-Pères since 1800

Debauve & Gallais, the chocolatier on the rue des Saints-Pères, was founded in 1800 by Sulpice Debauve, once pharmacist to Louis XVI, who opened his first chocolate shop in the faubourg Saint-Germain, near the rue Saint-Guillaume. For Marie-Antoinette he is said to have created coin-shaped chocolates, the pistoles.

Supplier to Napoleon, Debauve was named sole chocolate supplier to the royal family in 1816, and went on to serve Louis XVIII, Charles X and Louis-Philippe. In 1819, Percier and Fontaine designed the shop at 30 rue des Saints-Pères. Brillat-Savarin praised it in his Physiology of Taste, and Marcel Proust recommended its chocolates.

In 1823 Debauve took as partner his nephew Jean-Baptiste Auguste Gallais, also a pharmacist and the author of a Monographie du cacao. Taken over by Nicolas-Eugène Hugon in 1857 and then by his descendants, the house kept its shop and packaging until the factory closed in 1966. Paule Cuvelier took it over in 1989 with her son Bernard Poussin.

At 30 rue des Saints-Pères, in the 7th arrondissement, the shop, listed as a historic monument since 1984, offers Marie-Antoinette’s pistoles, bars, truffles and boxes of chocolates, as well as a collection of teas.