Chocolaterie Cazenave

Pierre Martin Cazenave, 22 years old and trained as a chocolate-maker in Bayonne, opened his own small chocolate factory on rue Lormand in 1854. Ten years later, in 1864, he moved the business to 19 rue des Arceaux, taking over a site where another chocolaterie had already operated for more than a century. In 1865 the workshop mechanized, installing Hermann steam-driven machines on the Allées Marines rather than relying solely on hand production.

The business stayed in the Cazenave family until 1929, when Pierre Martin's son Paul sold it during the economic crisis to Vital Biraben, from another established Bayonne chocolate-making family, and his wife Geneviève Thomasset. Claudine Bimboire and Jeanne Lafourcade, two women who had worked in the shop since the early twentieth century, later bought the business from Madame Biraben to keep the house running on its original methods. Bimboire's family bought out the Lafourcade share in 1991, and her grandchildren still own the chocolaterie today, more than a century after she first arrived there as a waitress.

The house is known locally for chocolat mousseux, a foamed drinking chocolate served under Bayonne's arcades, and for continuing to work chocolate from raw cocoa beans roasted and processed on site rather than from industrial couverture.