gabriella gershenson

Like the elaborate secret enclave of a 007 arch-nemesis, the Queens warehouse that houses the "pastry lab" of Fauchon–the high-end purveyor of French specialty foods that arrived here from Paris in 2000–is a souped-up operation complete with sealed-off chambers, high-tech gadgets and an air of camouflage. And it’s top secret.

In fact, the Astoria facility is so much on the down-low that Fauchon’s own public relations representatives–and this reporter–have not been allowed inside.

Restricted to the imagination, the setting of the two-story warehouse, which was gutted and redesigned as per the instructions of Fauchon’s executive pastry chef, Florian Bellanger, conjures scenes from a sci-fi film. Over 25 workers wearing sober white coats, hands moving methodically on frictionless tables, tinkering with unrecognizable equipment to concoct creations exotic and untold …

After talking to Bellanger, it seems that the image is not so far from the reality. "The way I see it," says Bellanger, a robust, graying 35-year-old with a pleasant, slightly doughy face and round gold-rimmed glasses, "[Pastry making] is part science and part craziness."

A firm proponent of technology in the kitchen, Bellanger sees to it that pastry making at Fauchon is as much "science" as it can be. "I work with the Excel program all day long to calculate percentages of fat, to calculate many things in the recipe," he shares, in heavily accented English. Though he quickly adds, "The computer doesn’t make the cake. We’re still craftsmen. We don’t push a button on a machine and a St. Honoré"–a traditional French cake of pate choux and pastry cream–"comes out."

While the machinery that Bellanger and his team utilize doesn’t quite evoke the automat, some of it is nothing short of futuristic. "We have a whipped cream machine that doesn’t whip!" announces Bellanger, who discusses his gadgets and his craft with the same unbridled enthusiasm. The machine, it turns out, incorporates air into the cream without actually "whipping" it, so in reality it’s more like "fluffed" cream than "whipped" cream. To ensure that the air entering the cream is clean, Bellanger had an ozone system installed into the generator. Using this method, the whipped cream comes out lighter, holds more volume, and is bacteria free.

Though Bellanger will share some tricks of his trade, the rest are carefully protected behind the warehouse doors. Case in point, the first floor, where most of the action takes place, is windowless. "We just want to hide ourselves," explains Bellanger. "We think that we have different technique. When you eat cake, you try to analyze the cake and you say, ‘Oh, how did they do that?’ We don’t want to spread the word."

Though the operation is a secret to the outside world, on the inside everything is transparent. Bellanger specified that enormous windows be built inside the walls, and that all doors be made of glass. This way everybody in the lab–in the flour room, the waterproof ice cream and sorbet room and the main pastry-making area–can see everyone else at work. "That way if someone isn’t doing something right," says Bellanger, "I can rush in and say, ‘No, no, this is how you do it!"

Fauchon, 442 Park Ave. (56th St.), 212-308-5919.