It was 20 years ago this month when an improbable partnership began that changed the state of pastries in Greater Cincinnati forever - and for the better.

With only $1,000 in capital, fine arts graduate-turned pastry chef Sharon Butler and social worker Mary Pat Pace opened a shop called Truffles in Madeira. Business was slow, and six months later it got worse: An attorney called to say someone else owned the "truffles" name. The partners had to come up with a new name to avoid a lawsuit.

Bonbonerie owners Sharon Butler (left) and Mary Pat Pace began making pastries together 20 years ago this month. (Ernest Coleman photo) | ZOOM |

In an Australian phone book at the library, the women found a sweets shop called "bonbonerie, " a variation on the French word for "confectionery." Few people in Cincinnati could pronounce or spell it then, but the partners decided Bonbonerie sounded exclusive and European - the image they wanted.

Now, anyone who knows about the best pastries and cakes in Cincinnati knows or has heard of Bonbonerie, which moved to O'Bryonville six years after the Butler-Pace partnership began.

Over the years, the women have given us English-style scones, opera cream cake, linzertortes and other sophisticated sweets. All of it is a great leap forward from the bleak, pre-Bonbonerie world of doughnuts and Danish.

And after 20 years, there's still nothing quite like the Bonbonerie, a funky, hip-looking pastry shop/tea room that finished second only to Maisonette as the best restaurant in Cincinnati in the 1998 Zagat Ohio restaurant guide. (Zagat since has omitted the Bonbonerie from the elite list, perhaps because someone pointed out it isn't really a restaurant.)

Even the partners would not have predicted they could take their little bakery so far.

"It was our dream, and it worked probably because we both worked really hard," says Butler.

Two decades ago, she was a restaurant pastry chef in Cincinnati who wanted to open her own food business. Butler's brother introduced her to Pace, his colleague at the Hamilton County Department of Children's Services. Pace was expecting her first child and also ready for a new venture.

OPERA CREAM CAKE

| ZOOM | In 1984, one year after the Bonbonerie opened, a restaurant owner asked Sharon Butler if she could mimic the famous opera cream candy in a cake. Within weeks, she had come up with a recipe: Chocolate chips are baked into chocolate layers, which are brushed with vanilla syrup, coffee liqueur and brandy. The layers are filled and iced with a mixture of white chocolate, cream and butter. The cake is chilled, glazed with bitter sweet chocolate and piped with white chocolate lace. After 19 years, the Bonbonerie's Opera Cream Cake (6-inch, $15; 9-inch, $35) is still a best seller.

At first, the women planned to open a New York-style deli, but then, based on Butler's experience, decided to make upscale pastries to sell to restaurants. Neither partner had a background in business, so mistakes were as common as butter and flour in their kitchen.

"In the beginning, we had a saying: Live and learn," says Pace. "But we were saying that way too much for long time."

Now they recognize they didn't charge enough for their products. Once they even gave a pan away because they couldn't extricate the cheesecake from it.

But from the start, the women were driven to produce quality pastries, using the best ingredients and hand labor.

"Ever since I was young, I loved pastries," says Butler, who studied art at the University of Cincinnati. "But I couldn't stand picking up a cookie or a cream puff that looked great but tasted terrible."

So she and Pace decided their pastries would look and taste great. And customers noticed the difference.

Although they envisioned their business as mostly wholesale to restaurants, customers began to ask where they could buy those incredible desserts they sampled when they dined out. Demand grew, and the partners began selling their pastries retail. In the beginning, they employed one person to work the counter at the shop. Today, about 20 full- and part-time employees staff the Bonbonerie counter.

Location has aided their success, though no one would have believed that in the beginning either. When Pace and Butler moved the Bonbonerie from Madeira to the former bicycle shop in O'Bryonville in 1989, they still were focused on wholesale production. They didn't care there was little parking or that the shop was difficult to find.

But when their business began to turn retail, they discovered customers, many from nearby Hyde Park, didn't mind tracking down their premium pastries. Unlike any other bakery in town, the Bonbonerie became a destination - a place to see and be seen while sipping coffee and nibbling a scone.

Which brings us to another key to Bonbonerie's success: innovation. The partners wanted to offer a morning pastry - not doughnuts, but something different. In 1988, Butler and Pace began making scones - flat, biscuit-like quick bread commonly served during English tea. A few confused customers called them "sconces" at first. But by the time the scones caught on, the Bonbonerie was years ahead of the afternoon tea rage that swept the country in the mid '90s.

The most crucial ingredient to this 20-year success is the perfect blend of the partners' personalities and skills. They share the same goal, but play different roles. Butler focuses on creative production; Pace handles money matters.

"I think MP (Mary Pat) is more realistic about things," says Butler, who convinced her partner to open a counter location at the new Ridge Market in Pleasant Ridge last year.

Pace jokes she doesn't trust Butler to "count the money." But she recognizes their dream venture has survived longer than most businesses - and many marriages - because they support each other at work and at home.

"We don't spent much time together outside of work," Pace says. "But I'd have to say Sharon is still my best friend."

E-mail cmartin@enquirer.com