Brioche à Tête

Bakery: Brioche à Tête
Address: 107 Avenue Fairmount O, Montréal QC
Website: https://www.briocheatete.ca/
Style: French 
Price: $$ 

This tiny patisserie may be one of these "blink and you'll miss it" businesses, with their door and single window revealing very little of what's inside. As a matter of fact, there also doesn't happen to be that much on the inside either. Everything is contained in and around one glass case: a few pastries, both sweet and savoury, and rows of baked goods.

The main thing setting Brioche à Tête apart from the rest is the fact that the signature item here isn't their croissants (though they have those too); it's their brioches. Yes, sweet egg bread. They come in several varieties: plain, sprinkled with rock sugar, or with a variety of toppings.

I decided to go with the raspberry brioche ($2.70). I love raspberries and was lured in by the amount of fresh fruit on top. There was a lot! It gave the otherwise subtly flavoured bun a hint of sourness, which was nice. Maybe that raspberry filling got a little juicy, thus making the dough a little soggy in some places. The one thing, however, that I wasn't the biggest fan of was the dough. Brioche dough should be airy and soft, but this one was a little too dense. Actually, it almost tasted old? You don't need any toppings with a fresh, fluffy brioche for it to taste amazing, but here, the edge where there was no fruit felt more like a crust: something that you have to eat through just to get into the middle.

Rating: **1/2