Dalloyau [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Dalloyau
Address: 2 Place Edmond Rostand, Paris
Website: http://www.dalloyau.fr
Style: French
Price: $$-$$$

Another Parisian hotspot, which *gasps* was actually NOT closed for August holidays. It was a miracle!


Nonetheless, I came to Dalloyau, a patisserie that's as ancient as it gets, a good hour before they closed and I was a little disappointed to find that they were already putting things away. I was also a little angry that while I was clearly looking at the case of goodies, they were removing them to their fridges or something. I mean, do you want business or not? It being rather late, bakery-wise, I still bought something from them.

 The first time I went, for lack of better choices, I picked out the Eat Bag (yes, the name is in English), a too cute box of four, quite pricey macarons in (from left to right): lemon, cognac, Earl Grey tea, and raspberry. Contrary to the outside of the box, they weren't very "mmmm", "miam miam" or "trop bon (too good)". Actually, they tasted a few days old: the centre wasn't very chewy and had little to no flavour and the cookies themselves were brittle and crumbled upon the first bite. Tip: don't go to Dalloyau for their macarons! Save money and your bleeding gums and go to Ladurée. ;)

However, I decided to give these guys a second chance and went with the apricot and almond tart (which doesn't look so great with the lack of light in this photo) and well, Dalloyau made up for their previous disappointment. The tartness of the apricots teamed up with a soft almond "paste" and a flaky, buttery shell was pretty delicious. And don't forget the chocolate on top. ^^

So, overall, Dalloyau certainly wasn't my favourite Parisian patisserie (and I'm not so sure I'd call it "une maison de gastronomie" as the bag attests :P), but it was alright and quite tasty... as long as you don't buy those macarons a few hours before closing~!

Rating: ***

Pâtisserie Sadaharu Aoki [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Pâtisserie Sadaharu Aoki
Address: 38-40 Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, Paris (basement of the Galeries Lafayette)
Website: www.sadaharuaoki.com
Style: Japanese, French
Price: $$

Although the main location is on Rue Vaugirard on the Rive Gauche, it was closed when I came along, so the only chance I got was in the basement/supermarket section of the Galeries Lafayette department store. This is accessed through the men's store (across the street from the main, women's section if my memory serves me correctly). Anyways, Pâtisserie Sadaharu Aoki, which is a pastry shop started by the Japanese-born, French-trained pastry chef of the same name. They also have locations in Tokyo, which I thought neat. You can't see very well what's there, but they had some beautiful pastries and cookies and chocolates with Japanese-inspired ingredients like green tea, red bean, etc.

The big purchase of the day came in the form of six macaroons (1-euro something for one; apologies for the horrible picture! Not sure what I was thinking when I made it...). They had the standard flavours as well, but I purposely picked out the Japanese flavours... without actually knowing what they were (except 'matcha') since they all had the original, Japanese names: green are matcha (green tea), yellow are some sort of candied plum, and the lovely red ones turned out to be black sesame. The plum was pretty good, the matcha amazing, and the black sesame extremely odd... after a first few bites, you think it's really good, but then when you keep eating it, you notice that they're actually really salty... and sweet at the same time. And then, upon the second cookie, you kind of feel like puking.XP And yet, I recommend it, I really do; should have tried a pastry though, because maaan, I bet they're good! ;)

Rating: ***

Boulangerie Maison Hilaire [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Boulangerie Maison Hilaire
Address: 22 rue Saint-Antoine, Paris
Website: n/a
Style: French
Price: $

While coming up empty-handed at the closed Lenôtre (it was August...) across the street, I just gave up and crossed the street into the neighbouring, lower-key bakery where I purchased a raspberry tart at an excellent price (the only bad thing about these famous patisseries is that you pay for the name and not necessarily the product -- though the latter very seldom happens and never occurred in Paris ;DDD) and it was amazing!

This was actually the first time I had had a French fruit tart at all, and I'm not talking about just Paris. I'd never bothered to try them before, so it was at Maison Hilaire that I discovered that I loooooooooved tarts, especially those of the berry kind. Fresh raspberries, and in this case, garnished with a sprig of red currant. Mmm, it was so delicious! *_* I would come to have better in Paris, but this was a very impressive start and I can't say anything bad at all about this place, though it was, as the name suggests, more boulangerie ("bread" bakery) than patisserie (pastry shop).

Rating: ***1/2

Carton [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Carton
Address: 22 rue de Buci, Paris
Website: n/a
Style: French
Price: $

On one of my last days in Paris, I went back north towards Notre-Dame, remembering that there was a more upscale pastry shop I could visit there, because I'd failed everywhere else (August = summer vacation for most small businesses). Naturally, I got lost and confused on the way there and chanced upon this place (I didn't know the name, but with some memory exercises and Google Maps navigation, I got the name; I'm pretty impressed with my Parisian geography, man!!). I had the opportunity to take a pic of the counter from the outside of the store (with two Australians looking on -- sorry guys!). I then went and bought myself a mixed berry tart and, lured in by the excellent price and the fact that I had yet to try one, I caved and bought an Opera torte.

 Sadly, they wrapped it horribly, so by the time I brought it back, my tart had half turned to jam. :( What's more, it really wasn't good. The glaze on this was too much and quite icky, as well as the tart itself was really thin and coated in dark chocolate -- there are many people who love chocolate and fruit together, but this was such a bad combination: the oddly too sour fruit, sticky glaze, melting chocolate and falling apart tart shell just turned out being a NO! from me.

The Opera torte... I had a super-fake interpretation from a Korean bakery here (with vanilla cream, chocolate cake and decorated with coffee beans) and it was so good. This... I don't think I'm having this again. This took me six sittings during three days to finish; it wasn't even a big slice, it was just too much. You take two forkfuls and you feel like you ate a tub of butter. I finished it on my very last day and even then, I was wondering if it would last in my carry-on until I came back, so I could give it to my brothers. I didn't want to risk it, but at the same time, I didn't enjoy this thing. The worst part was that after buying these two things, I turned the corner and there was the pastry shop I had been looking for. :(

Rating: **

Pâtisserie Saint-Honoré [RIP]

Bakery: Pâtisserie Saint-Honoré
Address: 2945 Bloor St. W, Toronto, ON
Website: n/a
Style: French, European
Price: $-$$

Somewhere along the way, I ended up on the stretch of Bloor St. around Royal York. Getting out because I remembered there being some sort of bakery here (The Hot Oven, it turned out), I chanced upon this patisserie and, well, getting a little excited at the prospect of French bakeries, I chose this one over the other. :P

The selection is pretty impressive, especially at a distance: full-sized tarts and flans in the window were enough to entice me. Then, there were the baked goods, croissants, some more savoury things (I remember something spinach and feta?) and then the "pastries" (all very clearly labelled and priced), although I was a little disappointed that they weren't overly French in look or style and I would have never called them that if I had seen them on their own. For example, the individual tarts, raspberry and blueberry, were topped with a mountain of jam/fruit puree. Same thing with the flan-like slices; they looked alright, but didn't contain that much fruit and hence, they weren't exactly what I was expecting.

However, I wasn't leaving without something and so I settled on the plum pie ($2.50/each), which looked pretty good. Upon examining it at home, I found it a little skimpy on the plums and was ready to write it off as a complete disappointment.. until I took one small bite and was pretty much hooked. This was *good*. Well, I still would have liked some more plums, but I liked it so much I don't think I can complain too much about it: the flaky, tart-like shell was perfect, and there was this dense mass  in between the shell and plums which had some fruit bits in it... it was slightly tangy and fruity, really nice and moist. Top this off with glaze and there you go. Really tasty!

Overall, Saint-Honoré isn't too authentic, but when taste's most important, I don't care that much. I guess it proved to be a very yummy surprise!

Rating: ***

European Patisserie

Bakery: European Patisserie
Address: 5072 Dundas St W, Etobicoke (Toronto), ON
Website: http://europeanpatisserie.com/
Style: European, Italian
Price: $$-$$$

We parked on this plaza once (to go for Korean food XD) and that was the first time I noticed European Patisserie, the teeny tiny pastry shop with the somewhat unimaginative name. Seeing I was planning on going bakery hunting in Runnymede (Bloor West Village) that day, I thought about saving this for another week (especially seeing as I'm at Kipling every weekend) and had been eagerly waiting to have the time to return, mainly because the total cuteness of the patisserie had managed to lure me in. If I had a pastry shop, it would look like this, I swear. Tiny space with some baroque accents and macaron trees in the window. So pretty! *-*

Sadly, I was a tad bit disappointed with the actual goodies. Firstly, probably because the outside (and the fact they had macarons; ie. they know what they're doing) had excited me a little too much and raised my expectations to towering heights. Secondly, because I discovered the pastry shop is actually more of a custom-cake/catering place than a bakery in that they seem to have a lot more orders (the counter behind the cash had some pretty beautiful cakes ready for pick-up; as a side note, they should have so stuck those on their picture slide show. The Gucci and Barbie cakes totally cheapen and undervalue what they're capable of creating! ;)) than what's available in store for immediate, drop-in purchase. This isn't all that much and even with the two glass counters, there's a lot of empty space and not much selection. Besides the aforementioned macarons, they have a two or three cake slices, the same amount of fruit tarts and a few cookies. As such, it was a little difficult to pick out three distinct things... and I wasn't in the macaron mood that day either. So, I settled on these three:

A chocolate-vanilla cake slice ($2.50) coated with chocolate and powdered sugar and the slivers of dough stuck together with some sort of jam. It kind of fell apart (well, more like toppled over -__-), so it wasn't much to look at, but it ended up being the favourite amongst the whole gang, even though from appearance alone, I was thinking that the strudel ($2.50) would actually come in first. In fact, the strudel was my first choice: spongy vanilla dough wrapped with what I assumed were apples (they were pears) and baked-on glaze on top. Baking with pears is always a problem, because they're so bland and with nothing to spice up the filling or the dough, this didn't have a lot of flavour.

Exclusively for myself, I got a fruit tart ($3.25) which wasn't as fruity as I thought and actually turned out to be a zeppole in tart form: nice, flaky form filled with a *generous* dollop of mascarpone cheese, slivered almonds, sweet cherry syrup and large pieces of cherries on top. It wasn't what I was expecting (actually, I was a little surprised EP ended up being Italian, as anything with "European" in it always makes me think Polish or Portuguese ;D), but at the same time... it ended up beating real zeppole. ;)))

Overall, it was alright, but didn't seem to live up to (weeks worth of) expectations and seeing as the portions are as teeny tiny as the store, some items (especially the tart) aren't really worth it. Or, you're supposed to come here just for the cake? *shrugs*

Rating: **1/2