Avis named her business Paradise Pastry because she imagined cathedrals. She thought about the stonemasons, glassblowers, sculptors- who gave lifetimes to the creation of beauty. Every sugar crust she rolled, every simple 'tarte Tatin' was a bit of a church. She consecrated herself to it: later, it became her tribute to her daughter and the unknown into which she'd disappeared. She had her cathedral to enter, to console her. Her friend Jean-Francoise, chef at La Petit Choux, said that her pastries would be transcendent, if only she wasn't American.

Diana Abu-Jaber