La Maison du Chocolat Rockefeller
La Maison du Chocolat's chocolatiers cut their slabs of ganache and praline into bonbons with actual guitar strings. The house nicknames that team its
chocolate musicians.2 This is the Rockefeller Center boutique, the second the house opened in New York, in 2000.1
Why go
Robert Linxe started the house in Paris in 1977. Nicolas Cloiseau came in under him and has directed every creation since 2012. Cloiseau is a Meilleur Ouvrier de France and works with thirty-five chocolatiers.2
Nicolas Decorde runs the fillings. He and his team hold about thirty praline and ganache recipes between them. The fillings go onto marble and get spread and smoothed by hand. Then the slabs are cut. Another team coats each bonbon in couverture and decorates it by hand, with a fork or a piping bag. That is how you tell one from another in a box.2 The macarons and the éclairs come out of the pastry atelier at Nanterre, outside Paris.2
The boutique sits beside the entrance to the Rainbow Room, across from Christie's.1 Six of these trade in the city, and Madison Avenue was the first the house opened anywhere outside France, in 1990.3
Order this / avoid
- Order: the hot chocolate. The house says it pours tastings of it at the counter.1
- Buy: ganaches ahead of anything else. They are what the house is built on.2
- Buy: macarons if you are eating in the next day.2
- Avoid: last-minute pastry. The house wants 48 hours on that; chocolates go same day.1
What locals & experts say
- The Infatuation NYC, on the house's Madison Avenue shop (24 September 2025):
A quintessential NYC chocolate shop.
5 - Rockefeller Center's own dining directory files the boutique under sweets and credits it with
an inspired vision for the art of the ganache, timeless pralines and ganaches, fruited chocolates, and exotic flavors
.4 - The limit: I have not found a critic who has written about this boutique.
Good to know
- Where: inside 30 Rockefeller Center, on the 49th Street side.1
- Delivery: the boutique runs a same-day messenger within Manhattan.1
- Gifts: the Coffret Maison, the Macaron Gift Box and the Parisian Hatbox can be filled to order.1
Verdict
could-visit — Walk in and buy by the piece. A box is a gift; a handful is how you find out whether you like this house.