Paris-Level Pastry, and a Reason to Linger in Fitler Square
La Maison Jaune may be new, but its purpose is clear: to make visitors feel as if they’ve left Philadelphia the moment they walk in.
“With the music and the aesthetics, I know it is over the top,” owner Zahra Saeed said in an interview. “But when somebody comes in there, I just want them to feel like they’ve escaped.”
The tiny café, housed in a building dating to 1801, is Saeed’s latest project as a real estate investor and interior-design obsessive. Nearly every chandelier, sketch, and mirror has a story — many of them packed into her suitcase from recent trips to France.
“Every café I would go into had a different vibe,” she said. “They had their own twist on the classics. I kept thinking, why don’t we have something like this in Philly?”
On a recent girls’ trip to France for her 50th birthday, she found herself walking Parisian markets with the café in mind.
“Every time I’ve gone before, I’ve bought stuff for my home,” she said. “This time I was like, oh, that would look so cute in the café.”
Those finds are still arriving. As they come in, she gets them framed and squeezes them into the space.
A Café That Keeps Its Past Intact
The building still carries a painted sign for “David Mann Meats & Provisions,” which Saeed said dates to 1881.
Some neighbors once suggested removing it.
“Maybe you should get rid of the sign,” she remembers being told. “I am like, what are you talking about? It is so beautiful and it is literally a part of history. Why would I do that?”
Before opening, the project drew questions at a neighborhood meeting about trash and delivery trucks, as well as the removal of metal window bars that had been added in the mid-20th century.
“There was never a zoning issue,” Saeed said. “This is by-right. The trash concern was absolutely legit, but once we explained that we are not cooking there, that there is no kitchen in there, everyone was fine.”
Since opening, she said, she has not heard complaints.
“So many people come in and say, I live a block away, I live down the street, we love it,” she said. “I own the building. I pay taxes here. I am invested in the neighborhood.”
Small Café, Big Pastry Ambitions
Behind the ornate mirrors, La Maison Jaune runs an unusually serious pastry operation for such a small space. Saeed hired two pastry chefs she met through online applications, one of whom “basically lived in Paris since he was 17.”
Neighbors snap up the pastries as quickly as the chefs can make them. “We almost sell out of everything,” she said. “There’s really not anything that gets left behind.”
For Thanksgiving, they introduced a pecan tart. A hazelnut ganache tart followed, then a chocolate caramel tart. A full croissant lineup is scheduled to debut this year.
“We are going a little nuts with the croissants,” she said. “[Soon] we’ll have the regular, the almond, the pistachio and all these other flavors we want to introduce.”
To keep up with demand, Saeed is constructing a dedicated off-site pastry kitchen.
“In Philadelphia, there’s not a lot of spaces you can rent for commercial kitchens geared towards pastry,” she said. “So I just decided to open up my own. I do want to grow the brand and the locations and maybe do more catering or eventually get into wholesaling.”
Her personal favorite item in the case is one many customers may not recognize by name: the macaron de Nancy. The recipe, she said, comes from the town of Nancy and a story about two sisters who supported themselves during the French Revolution by baking
“It is the original version of a macaron,” she said. “That is how they were made in the 1700s in France. The inside filling is chocolate and caramel. Those are the original macarons, how they are supposed to be made. Now what we see with all the colored stuff is the more commercial version.”
“Our chefs make it,” she said. “It is ridiculously good.”
Carving a Niche in a Competitive Coffee Scene
Saeed is careful not to frame La Maison Jaune as a rival to the neighborhood’s other coffee shops.
“I do not think we are hurting them either, believe it or not,” she said. “Everybody is busy. Coffee shops are part of the culture now. They are the new pubs.”
She believes the neighborhood needed more places to linger, especially with the rise of working from home.
“People want to come in for the coffee and the drinks, but they also want a quick bite,” she said. “Nobody wants to necessarily go to a restaurant and sit down for lunch.”
What she insists on, beyond pastries and marble tile, is hospitality.
“Customer service is top priority for me,” she said. “We cannot be somebody that is just handing over a cup of coffee and saying, here you go.”
She pushes her staff to learn names, ask questions, remember dogs.
“Get to know people, talk to them,” she said. “We all have to feel human. It cannot just be a transaction.”