Bar à Beurre

Bakery: Bar à Beurre 
Address: 350 Notre Dame E, Montreal QC
Website: https://www.barabeurre.com/
Style: Italian
Price: $$$ 

One of the very few bakeries in Old Town Montreal itself, Bar à Beurre is an Italian patisserie specializing in what are known as "butter balls", Italian shortbread sandwich cookies stuffed with a buttery cream filling, although they have a few more standard items as well, including those omnipresent macarons (whose thick piped filling makes them look more like whoopie pies), cupcakes, custom cakes, and other cookies, Italian and otherwise. Essentially, the selection isn't that large at all and very cookie-focused, so your best bet is probably those peach-shaped balls of buttery goodness. :P

However, being in Old Town, they come at quite a steep price tag given the fact they are, after all, just cookies, but I mean, it is hard to pass up anything with butter in the name, and this was certainly the case here.  Not to mention having once tried imported Italian versions (considerably smaller, but still possessing the distinctive peach tones with filling) from a local deli and being curious how these would compare.

So, two different flavours of "butter balls" were sampled: lemon and pomegranate-orange. In some way, the name of these round cookies is a little deceiving given the fact that you're not really getting a butter punch or anything like that. A fellow sampler assumed the filling would actually just be butter and concluded that this particular flavoured variety had "no butter"; however, it's a bit similar to the filling found in macarons: thick and decadent and, in both cases for me, slightly tangy. A bit hard to manage, but nonetheless a tasty, buttery shortbread 'shell'. The lemon had more distinguishable taste, but both were quite good. In the end, though, I can't help but say a cookie is just a cookie.

Rating: **1/2