PORTRAIT.Denise Acabo, dean of Paris chocolate makers: "Rather die than sell!"

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The life of Denise Acabo is a millefeuille of stories, meetings, joys and sorrows too.From this sweet delight emerges a little woman with a very sweet face, framed by two blond mats and which she brings two sparkling blue eyes.Aged 85, she continues to hold her chocolate factory, at Montmartre's feet, in the heart of her Paris.

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In the chocolate factory she has been holding for 45 years, a stone's throw from the red mill and the hill, the lilacs are not dead.The whole bohemian is in this little shop of 30, rue Pierre Fontaine.Entering Denise's chocolate factory is entering her world.Everything is in his image, to his taste.Few has changed in 45 years at the Gold Star.Even if the spleen of gray and rainy days in Paris returns, in mid-September, the heat always wins the one that crosses the doors of the establishment.

Behind the counter decorated with an old woodwork that Denise cherishes and that she never fails, every morning, to caress almost religiously, strolling in front of the window or ecstatic like a child in view of a sweetness that she offersto its customers or offers itself to itself.Despite her 85 spring, the manager dressed in a Scottish kilt has kept her young woman's tunes."I see her a bit like my grandmother, the one we dream of having, always smiling and full of kindness," notes Mayumi, the only employee of the chocolate factory for fourteen years, between two little sentences of her boss.

From Prince Bleu de Montmartre to Meryl Streep

And if Denise is constantly speaking, it is rarely to talk about her."I don't like myself, I avoid myself in the mirror, that's how it is.I love my life but I especially like others. "And the others are not just anyone in the heart of the octogenarian.His relatives of course, her two children Martine and Alain, her little daughter Louise but also her friends and customers;which are, moreover, often both.

Michou, for example, the Bleu de Montmartre Prince who died in 2020, a former boss of one of the most famous transforming cabarets in the capital, had his habits at Denise.Faced with the Caisse of the Chocolate Factory, a Prie-Dieu is placed there.That of Michou.“A man of great sweetness.He loved to come here, he was happy.He sat there and we chatted the hours, "she recalls before reading, a little tight throat, a message of affection left by the Blue Prince."To you my Denise, your friendship, your nice smile, I love you," engraved in blue ink on a white sheet.

Meryl Streep also was at home at the Gold Star.“She had her apartment a little higher in the street.She loved me.Whenever she was going to Paris, she never forgot to come and see me. ”Some customers would see their Madeleine de Proust in it.

The daughter of two Italians who left to live in Tunisia, Denise was born in Tunis on August 22, 1936. She devoted unconditional love and admiration to her mother - which she did not know very late.“Mom was a renowned Piedmontese cook, with great elegance and very beautiful.She could not take care of me during my childhood, so that at three years old, she put me in boarding the nuns of Carthage, until my majority ".

"My daughter, you're just a palace"

Very young, Denise understands that she will not be "intellectuals" of her time."Mom constantly repeated to me:" My daughter, you're just a palate. "And she was right.I only know how to do that, I only like the big food.It was I who first tested mom's recipes when I was very young, and I was already taking great pleasure in it, "she recalls.

After short studies, Denise became secretary of the Papeteries de France in Tunis. But the evacuation of French troops in the country, decided in 1958 after tensions linked to the Algerian war, pushes her to leave the country in emergency with her mother. The two women then take over the management of Bordeaux. "Mom had settled in the Lot-et-Garonne with a rich owner who was in love with her, while I had found refuge with the sisters in Bordeaux, continuing to work for the stationery of France. I visited them every weekend by bus. ” The adventure lasts some time but Denise wants something else. She ends up buying a delicatessen in Colombes, in the Hauts-de-Seine, "to see people", as she tells. Leaving Tunis, Denise also left her companion at the time, "a Jew from Tunis, heir to a large family. It all ended when he wanted me to get into his family. They all spoke Hebrew, I did not understand anything. My departure for France signed our farewell. »»

It is in Bordeaux that she married the one who will become the love of her life and the father of her two children.An Italian met in Tunis, a “very handsome man”, to whom Denise lends without hesitation the tunes of Jean Marais.So beautiful “that Saturdays, young customers came to turn around him”, she still recalls.It is together that they will win the Ile-de-France.

The golden star, an old delicatessen and a love story

After Colombes, Denise bought the store on rue Pierre Fontaine in 1976. “I regularly passed through the neighborhood and I still saw this shop with which I was madly in love.It was my style, the woodwork, the mirrors, the box ... "which will later become one of the most famous chocolateies in Paris was a delicatessen held by a Bougon old man.“He spent his days sitting behind the counter with his dog at his feet.And at each of my passages, I begged him to sell his business to me ”.But the supplications do nothing, the old man refuses.It is ultimately cash laid on the marble counter which completes to convince him.“He signed the sale in stride, truthful.Like what, money is all in life, "quips the owner.

She has not forgotten the difficult beginnings."I have never been there to sell absolutely.That people buy or do not buy, no matter.Above all, I like the meeting with others.I only sell chocolates of exceptional quality but behind everyone hides a story that I like to tell customers so that they know what they eat. "Denise is concerned about detail.Thus, each sweetness is accompanied by a word written by hand and on which it is possible to know its origin.Calissons, Cotignac d'Orléans, Lyon cushions and other grapes in Sauternes have no secrets for her.

Keep your morale despite the tests

Doubles that make the dramas that have marked the life of Denise forget.At the end of the 1970s, she lost her husband during a tragic road accident in Paris."We had gone to get our daughter Martine with whom my husband had argued.I immediately felt that we were going to die.A few minutes after finding it, a biker arrived at high speed and lost control of his machine.He struck my husband with full whip, killing him instantly, ”she says painfully.Seriously injured, she cannot take care of her shop and her children alone.His mother comes to help him.

More recently, an explosion due to the poor manipulation of a gas pipe on Valentine's Day has almost entirely destroyed its chocolate factory.Denise also recognizes that times have changed."It's no longer the same thing, the more the same life, the more the same customers.It no longer has the charm of 45 years ago.We all knew each other at the time.The neighborhood was full of artists.I have the cockroach, ”she explains, nostalgic.

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"Rather die than sell!"»»

Trees that have not started the morale of the golden star.“I am happy in life.Each time, I get out of it, despite the tests, I get out of it all the time. "And for her, there is no question of closing shop."To leave is to sign my death stop," she said in a serious tone.I would constantly cry in my apartment upstairs.Rather die than sell ”.And it is not the proposals that are missing.

“Three chichas have already wanted to buy me.Some people tell me that they have a lot of money but I don't care, I always tell them to get out.And then if it is to break the beautiful woodwork, no thanks! ”, She launches, annoyed.“It’s a pleasure to go down here every day.In 45 years I have never been reluctant to open the shop, provided it lasts. ”

By Nicolas Daguin. As a partnership with the Training and Improvement Center for Journalists (CFPJ).

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