Behind every mille-feuille there is a house with a grape arbor in Angol, in southern Chile, and a whole family cooking together. This is Patricia's story, and Rosselot's.
Patricia Rosselot grew up in Angol, in southern Chile, where the kitchen was the center of the house. In summer her father, Mario Rosselot, gathered the family under the grape arbor to put up what would keep through winter: jams from the season's fruit, and preserved corn and green beans. One enormous table where parents, grandmother and the rest of the family worked side by side.
She learned to cook from her mother, Ketty Trippel; her grandmother, Raquel Lizama, finished the job. The recipes came down as an inheritance: pastel de choclo, humitas, sopaipillas, pan amasado, cazuela. And the quince and rosehip jams, unforgettable for the work they took and for the taste.
The refinement came with the blood and the landscape: a Swiss grandfather, French ancestry and a region full of European families, where fruit came off the tree, milk and cheese were made at home, and eating was a way of being together. "For me, cooking has always meant creating unforgettable family moments," says Patricia.
Patricia arrived in Panama in 1990. The Chilean embassy hired her to cook for its events and, when the ambassador left the country, she gave Patricia a baking book with a note that turned out to be prophetic: "Your flavors are wonderful. What if you tried desserts?"
The idea was born in a car on the way to the beach, the year Panama's first megamall opened. Do you think they will have coffee and cookie kiosks? I would love to sell Chilean pastries. They explained that it was an impulse business. "Done. That is what I want."
Patricia trained her own way, self-taught and by sheer effort: she went back to Chile to study pastry production and paid a bakery in Argentina to teach her the business side. On Rosselot's first day, half the doughs came out raw. In the early years every day meant producing, baking, driving and arriving at the kiosk to serve. The rule that still governs comes from those beginnings: made fresh every baking day, Monday through Saturday, with love, the way you would at home.
"People often ask me what Rosselot means. I say, with pride: it is my last name. It emigrated to stay."
Patricia Rosselot
A tradition that is shared.
Patricia arrives in Panama from Chile, with a year of cooking school and the recipes from home.
Rosselot is born: in December the first kiosk opens at Multiplaza.
The Town Center store opens.
Town Center moves within the same mall, to the South Tower, level M3, across from Fuzion Salón.
Two counters, and whatever comes out of the oven Monday through Saturday. And the grandchildren, who already ask for their birthday cake.
Thin layers of pastry and manjar. The house signature.
Beef, baked, the way it is done in southern Chile.
Tres leches, orange, chocolate. For celebrating and sharing.
Everything we make, we make with a lot of love. Stop by the counter or order something to share with family or friends.