The Tempered Room

Bakery: The Tempered Room
Address: 1374 Queen St, Toronto ON 
Website: http://www.thetemperedroom.com/
Style: French, European 
Price: $$$ 

The Tempered Room, with its rustic wood benches in the window and minimal signage, is easy to walk past; perhaps you might not even realize afterwards that you've just missed a patisserie. I might be guilty of that, unless this bakery with its displays shoved deep into the store is fairly new and I simply didn't notice it when I was in the area more than a year ago. I'd at least like to see it that way. .__.

Anyways, although the bakery on the whole is fairly large, the area with all the baked goods is rather small, as is the selection. I believe that they don't bake most/all of their breads, but their pastries are homemade and feature a rather limited variety of petite (and I mean petite) pastries, dainty enough to fit on one finger, a few "larger" tarts, and about 4 types of French dough goodies. At the counter, they also had a basket of chouquettes (mini puff pastries; 6 for $2), but they only had four left. All items are labelled and priced.At a glance, I thought the elaborate pastries (minis and tarts) really small (and quite expensive for the size), even in comparison to other French bakeries. I was intrigued by some of the small pastries (like one with green tea powder), but I could not see it being worth it.

As is always the case, the most bang-for-your-buck items was the French dough. In this, however, there is little variation between one product to the next. Obviously, this is a small operation which doesn't bother me at all, but, for example, I was a little disconcerted that all the baked goods, with the exception of the plain croissant, had big chunks of dark chocolate in it. I'm not a big chocolate fan and would have really liked an option without chocolate (something with fruit, for example -- it was the season for local peaches and strawberries) or at least something that wasn't so... chocolatey. :P

In the end, I settled for the bread pudding with dark chocolate chunks ($3.75). It looked like the chocolate was only on top, but there was a lot of it on the inside. Wholly unnecessary, in my opinion, but besides that: this was one giant mountain of bread pudding. I happen to like bread pudding and this was... well, without exaggeration, this was the best bread pudding I've ever had! *-* Yes, the dark chocolate wasn't needed and made it a little too sweet when you got a chocolate pocket, but wow. Big chunks of rich, buttery dough, slivered almonds -- enough said. I heated it up as recommended and my mouth is watering just thinking about it. The Tempered Room has found another fan. :P

Rating: ***1/2