1.   Herme, who makes regular trips to the United States, laments that many American pastry chefs are caught up in the visuals.

2.   It is a simple tart made of razor-thin slices of apple and a flat disk of traditional American pastry.

3.   Perhaps, he suggested, American pastry is going through the same growing pains French pastry did a decade ago.

4.   The emphasis at Anago, owned by chef Robert Calderone and his wife, Susan Finegold, will be on American pastries with European decorating.