One of the hallmarks of Uptown Oakland’s Tarts de Feybesse, the feted bakery and patisserie, is polished precision.
Tarts de Feybesse
324 24th St. Suite A, Oakland; tartsdefeybesse.com
Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m; Sundays 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
From the neatly organized pastry case with pristinely aligned rows of financiers and other items, to the bright, sun-lit retail space and kitchen, to the thin rings of green onion sitting atop the wobbly white center of the scallion and egg roll, everything seems right where it belongs.
But, in the story of founders Monique and Paul Feybesse, there was at least one time when passion overtook precision — the proposal.
The two chefs, who have trained in a range of fine-dining restaurants around the world, first met in 2013 while working together at acclaimed Danish restaurant Geranium under chef-owner Rasmus Kofoed. Monique’s visa expired, and she departed for a new post at Atera in New York City.
Paul, smitten, remained in Denmark and asked for a two-week vacation to visit Monique in New York. They visited a Manhattan exhibit on Ferran Adria of El Bulli and dined at Lafayette during a snow storm. Paul proposed, and days later, they were married in a ceremony at city hall. Paul took two extra weeks of vacation before returning to an annoyed boss in Denmark.
The tart that started it all
The precision kicked back in to balance their new marriage with demanding jobs an ocean apart. They coordinated schedules for daily FaceTime sessions despite the six-hour time difference, and started making plans to reunite.
Paul is from France’s Lozere region and they moved together in 2015 to Paris, where they worked for Paul’s mentor, Michelin-starred chef Yannick Alléno at Ledoyen, where one of their menu contributions was a Guinness beer tart. That year, Paul won the title of San Pellegrino Best Young Chef in France.
By 2016, Monique was pregnant with their first child and back in the Bay Area where she grew up and had launched her culinary career at Masa in Nob Hill. Paul was still working on getting his green card, and the daily calls now had to be structured around a nine-hour time difference.
During one of Paul’s visits, he experimented with an apple tart, topping it with thinly sliced apples arranged in layers to look like a rose. Friends and family purchased a few, then Monique posted a picture to Instagram with the hashtag #tartsdefeybesse, and the first, short-lived incarnation of their baking business was born.
After the birth of their son, Monique became chef de cuisine at Cavallo Point’s fine dining restaurant in Sausalito and supervised the culinary program at Robert Sinskey Vineyards in Napa. Paul got his residency paperwork and took a job in San Francisco working for chef Corey Lee of Benu.
A pandemic pivot back to pastries
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Monique was on maternity leave with the couple’s second child, and Paul was furloughed from his role coaching the U.S. team for the Bocuse d’Or (known as the culinary olympics).
The couple, living in Vallejo, started baking bread for their neighbors. Each day’s batch of bread quickly sold out, and they soon started baking other savory and sweet items. Tarts de Feybesse was reborn. People were coming from San Jose and other far reaches of the area to pick up their breads, pastries and other items. Soon, their treats were also sold at Magnolia Mini Market in Oakland.
“The philosophy has been to take our backgrounds, French and Filipino-American, and mix all these different influences with high quality ingredients and high standards. But we also want to keep it fun for people,” Paul said.
Tarts de Feybesse immediately stood out as Paul and Monique deployed their backgrounds as savory chefs in Michelin-starred kitchens to develop unique creations influenced by seasonal ingredients. The following and attention kept growing. By 2023 they were exploring a full retail location and, determined to not take on outside investors, were enticed by an offer from the developer of an uptown Oakland residential and commercial tower to build out the space how they liked. In November 2024, Tarts de Feybesse opened on the ground floor of the Vespr building.
Since then, Tarts de Feybesse has become an essential stop on any tour of the Bay Area’s top patisseries and bakeries. The business has grown from a half dozen employees to 20, and the kitchen operates almost around the clock to meet the demands of both the catering and retail operations. In 2025 and 2026 they were named James Beard Award semi-finalists in the best pastry chef or baker category, and when the Super Bowl came to Santa Clara earlier this year, Tarts de Feybesse helped cater one of the events.
“What makes Tarts de Feybesse special is that it’s not typical to do bread, viennoiserie and patisserie like we are,” Monique said. “We do it all at a high level with technique, and everyone on this incredible team is passionate about the work and doing better. It’s all about the work ethic that makes you successful.”
Operations and offerings continue to expand, and the couple’s precision keeps it all running. In the neatly organized kitchen a shelf holds a storage box for pastry tools, 24 little sliding drawers with labels like “fish tweezers,” “pepper spray,” “rose nozzles,” “star cutters,” “kitchen needles,” and “iPhone charger.” For customers, the precision is evident in the pastries carefully aligned in the imported Italian glass case that greets them at the entrance. Skinny, pristine eclairs sit next to brioche feuilletée with a dizzying amount of layers, pain perdu with a shiny coat of caramelization, and a basque cheesecake that defies gravity with its erect posture despite a light and airy, yet creamy interior.
A tricky treat leads the way
Precision is also a key element in what has become a signature offering at Tarts de Feybesse, trompe l’oeil, or trick of the eye creations. Think a chocolate shell molded and colored to look like a lemon with a lemon curd inside. And, among the trompe l’oeil, the mango is the star. It takes two to three days to make, and constitutes roughly 25% of retail sales. On weekdays they make approximately 120 mangoes, and on Saturdays it’s closer to 250.
The foundation of the mango is a financier made with a mix of almond and gluten-free flour. The “mango insert” is made from passionfruit puree, mango puree, vanilla bean, pectin, and diced fresh mango. They use Champagne mangoes for the treat because they are sweeter and less fibrous than other varieties. A layer of white chocolate mousse is added, and the filling and insert is placed in a silicone mold and frozen before it is encased in a layer of white chocolate and cacao butter glaze. The mangoes are finished by hand, dipped and sprayed with yellow, green and red cocoa butters to give it the appearance of a real fruit straight from the tree.
“Think of someone you really like and smash it,” Paul says before demonstrating how to crack the mango open with a spoon.
Now 13 years into their relationship, the creativity, hard word, dedication and precision are still defining their success and future plans. Monique would like to reflect more of her Filipino heritage in the offerings (something they’ve also heard requests for).
“I want to explore some of the Filipino flavors I and others have nostalgia for, but not do it in a typical or obvious way,” Monique said. “Maybe we’ll showcase ube in a savory way.”
In general, they plan to keep adding more savory items to the menu. They also are growing the catering side and continue to expand their place in the Bay Area food community, working on collaborations with other food businesses, and developing a crepe cooking demonstration for kids at Children’s Fairyland for later this year. The next trompe l’oeils planned are pomegranate and avocado.
