Grue Patisserie: The new French patisserie changing taste buds in Manchester

“Soulful, heritage, and Timeless”: three words self taught head pastry chef and mastermind behind the tarts Farah Bioche uses to describe her new French patisserie with Wissam Jedar. 

Based in Altrincham, Grue Patisserie has recently opened its door for fellow Mancunians to taste their French-inspired pastries and cakes. 

For this Valentine’s weekend they are also releasing a limited edition red love heart entreme called Amour. Filled with a vanilla bavaroise mousse, roasted almonds, a madeleine biscuit and a red fruit confit, topped with small flecks of gold and petals, the palm-sized delicacy is unique. 

Amour, is not the only desert on show, with fake-fruit entremet, apple crumble muffins, molten chocolate cake and tiramisu cheesecake, you are not short of a selection.

Farah touched on how their patisserie differs from those in Manchester.

“There are not a lot of French patisseries in Manchester, there’s bakeries, but not patisseries,” said Farah, before explaining the process that goes into each pastry.

“Pastry is mainly entremet, it’s everything that is not from the oven. A good pastry has to sit in the freezer, keeping it fresh, which is what we do. A bakery is everything that comes out of the oven. I don’t know how to bake well. I struggled for ages to make a good cookie. But I’m good with pastry.”

Wissam explained how Grue Patisserie came to be: “We started a year and a half ago at home. We added a fridge or two in our home kitchen, a stainless steel table, a small one. It was a mess.

“We had that for almost a year. And then we found a workshop in Salford back in September and we moved from home to the workshop. That’s where we could make more products for pop-ups.

“Pop-ups are very good, but at one point I do think you need a physical place. We found this [Grue Patisserie] in June. We had to do a lot of work on the shop because it used to be an old sandwich shop, about 30 years old. We had to redo everything.

“It was supposed to be ready to open in September. But complications with the construction company delayed things. So five or six months delay, but in the end, here we are.”

Wissam is Moroccan and Farah has a French dad and Algerian mum, but both were born and raised in Brussels, resulting in a concoction of elegant taste and style, showcased through the new patisserie and tarts.

“Giving is my love language” Farah said, adding that they cracked over 8,000 eggs and created around 3,000 mini bites last year. This was before they had a permanent residence in Altrincham and only did pop-ups and pre-ordered cakes and pastries.  

Farah said her mum was the biggest influence in getting her into baking. “As long as I remember I’ve been creating cakes. At four years old I was doing crepes. And then I started doing some cakes when I was in primary school to give to people in class.

“And then in high school, I started to sell my cupcakes, very ugly cupcakes, to my classmates. I remember it was like one euro. And then I don’t know, with the arrival of Instagram, I’ve seen some nice stuff, so I wanted to recreate that. Until I then found my style two years ago.”

One of Wissams favourite entremets is the Mojito lemon, a store eye catcher. “Inside the lemon is mint, apple, lemon supreme and vanilla ganache!”

In the future Farah and Wissam hope to impliment speciality coffee to pair with the entrements or have them as stand-alone. “We want to do coffees with meringue on top, or tiramisu cream on top, or creme brulee. We also want to add French baguettes and a lot more entrement in the fridge. I think the selection is going to grow a lot once we set up the team on the baking side of things.”

With only three patisserie chef’s currently on board and a two month old baby, it’s safe to say the couple have their hands full.

Grue Patisserie are open Tuesday to Friday – 9am to 4pm and Saturday and Sunday 9am to 6pm.