Fabian's Café

Bakery: Fabian's Café
Address: 876 Markham Rd., Scarborough ON
Website: http://www.fabianscafe.com
Style: French, German
Price: $$$$

Seeing as I didn't actually visit Fabian's Café in person for this review, but went to their booth at the Toronto Christmas Market (Dec. 3-12, 2010 -- Distillery District), I think it's only fair that I say right away that my review is based on this experience only.

Still, I really think it's enough to say that it's not worth it. The Christmas Market itself was a huge disappointment and I recommend that people don't brave the sub-zero temperatures to go this thing. The website tries to make this sound like a decent knockoff of the Weihnachtsmarkt in Germany, which it clearly wasn't. Descriptions of the market included plenty of stalls with baked goods, a beer garden, and much much more. No. First of all, my baked goods hunting pretty much failed: not only was there nothing to choose from, the prices were absolutely ridiculous. The only place with reasonable prices was the Slovenian stand, but all they had was what looked like pączki. :( There really wasn't anything else.

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This sort of bitter was still lingering when we encountered a stand for Fabian's Café, a bakery/café in Scarborough, which claims they're also a "Konditorei", despite the fact that none of their baked goods were in the least bit German. I'd call it more French: fruit tarts, croissants, flans, St-Honoré, etc. They had their pamphlets for the taking, and we were looking through it, mostly because they had the prices listed. The above tart was listed as being $2.60, which is pretty reasonable. And yet, we went to pay and it ended up being $3.50, not what was listed which was a little annoying. 

As for the tart itself, it was alright. Ha ha ha I'm now much more discriminate after tasting the best in France , but it certainly could have been better. As you can even see from the photo *points*, it was rather... skimpy on the fruit. There was a lot of glaze and a lot of, though tasty, custard in the homemade shell, but considering that *is* supposed to be a raspberry tart, the 'raspberry' part was sadly lacking. Really, the number 1 thing you could taste was the custard. The best had to be the shell which was lined with an almost invisible, though slightly detectable coating of dark chocolate; teamed up with the custard and raspberries, it was tasty. Overall: good, but a little disappointing. And not worth the price! ;P

[UPDATE]  So once, several months ago, one brother went to Scarborough and returned with baked goods from Fabian's, thinking that I'd never reviewed it, though it did look familiar. Turns out we went to this place looooong ago (years before the Cake Tour existed) and it had already been reviewed. Seeing that this review is based on the Christmas Market experience, I thought I'd still add an appendix. The Cafe itself has a variety of German cakes, slab cake slices as well as chocolates. From the selection, he chose a Napolean (Mille-feuille) which was alright, though it turned out rather doughy. Good cream, nice icing on top. The second item was a Bienenstich, a yeast-based dough filled with generous layer of cream and topped with caramelized almonds on top. The almonds were a little difficult to penetrate, but it was fairly good. Not the best I've tried, but far from the worst. Ha ha now I can let my conscience rest easier following this add-on. ;)

Rating: **1/2