La Patisserie 金磨坊

 Bakery: La Patisserie 金磨坊
Address: 1405-4771 Mcclelland Road, Richmond BC
Website: https://la-patisserie-bakery.business.site/
Style: Chinese
Price: $$-$$$

Let's admit it: Chinese bakeries don't often conjure up images beyond cheap, clone-like meat or cream buns served out of big plastic bins and tossed haphazardly into plastic baggies upon purchase. Even those with a little more than Westernized bread, there is still this element of cheapness exuding from it. Some bakeries, however, are aiming to change this preconception. One of them is La Patisserie "Golden Mill", a chic little pastry shop that, though they do sell your classic meat floss and coconut cream buns as well, seems to focus on elaborate creamy cake creations and dainty sweet and savoury flaky pastries. With this being the focus, this bakery is definitely not cheap; in some ways, I found some items too expensive, especially since, though products looked pretty, the quality that you would expect at that price was not there.

The first item was a wintermelon "wife" pastry ($2.00). There was a good amount of paste, but I felt the pastry was a bit too underbaked and disintegrated too easily. On the other hand, the egg wash on top was too thick and just fell off the rest of the pastry in one piece.

I also grabbed a little bag of green tea "matcha" butter cookies ($5.00). I actually thought they were $3 at first and was surprised that they were $5. These were not cheap cookies and yet I was ready to laugh at my first bite: these were not matcha cookies and they probably weren't butter cookies either. Maybe they used green tea powder, but it was not matcha. When I make matcha butter cookies at home, they're rich and super flavourful: you can taste both key components. The fact that there was no rich green tea flavour for how green they were indicates it must have been food colouring. Huge disappointment. They were also very floral - was jasmine tea used?? Actually, that was the only thing I could taste.

In the end, it appears that all that glitters is not gold. :/

Rating: **