Farine & Vanille

Bakery: Farine & Vanille 
Address: 5000 Park Ave, Montreal, QC 
Website: https://www.farineetvanille.com/
Style: French, Canadian 
Price: $$ 

Making it a priority to cover the city's most top rated bakeries and those that consistently appear on "best of" lists, I started my latest Montreal tour with artisan bakery Farine & Vanille, who seems to have the distinction of having very good Mexican conchas. That being said, the bakery seems to be more "flour than vanilla" in that their bread selection far outnumbers their sweets, which consist of a couple baked goods (croissants, pains au chocolat, cinnamon brioches and those aforementioned conchas), one type of pound cake and some cookies, I believe. Prices are a bit high and I thought the cost of the conchas in particular a bit steep given they don't entail the same amount of work as, say, French pastries.

Taking all this into account, I went with the cinnamon brioche ($3.75). This golden brown pastry featured a flaky, flavourful dough wound with a nice amount of cinnamon in the form of a drier rub-like mass. Good taste and crisp texture; I liked the glaze on top, but felt that there could have been more of it.

Perhaps Farine & Vanille doesn't necessarily make my quintessential best of, but it's still a solid bakery with a smaller selection of tasty pastries.

Rating: ***