Bakery:
181 Bakery (181烘培坊)
Address:
No. 181, Zhongshan Road, Hualien
Website:
https://www.181bakery.com/
Style:
Chinese, French
Price:
$$
Let's admit that the title of "French bakery" doesn't exactly mean all that much in Asia. In most cases, you'll be hard pressed to find anything French besides croissants. However, sometimes a "French" bakery may surprise you and you can find more there than you expected. While the Eiffel Tower outside may not coincide with all the items sold in-store such as typically Taiwanese bread varieties, 181 does have a larger- and more authentic-than-average selection of rustic breads, flaky French pastries, cookies and elegant cakes. In fact, I was pretty impressed - and not just for Hualien.
Quite a number of items looked appealing, but one pastry definitely caught my eye: was that a kouign amann?! The label "焦糖奶油酥" comes out as creme brulee, but I think that might be a mistranslation or an unintended combination of characters. Literally caramel butter pastry works. Whatever. The eyes don't play tricks and I knew what I was looking at. I never pass up a kouign amann, so the caramel butter pastry ($48) it was. The pastry was rich and flaky with a nice caramelized crust on top; it was definitely one of the better attempts at French pastries in Taiwan (and believe me, I tried a lot). The major minus? While I enjoyed the top, the bottom just a thick layer of that caramelized sugar that it cracked off like pieces of candy. Totally out of proportion with the rest of the pastry, too brittle, too out of sync with the dough, too sweet. It had the potential for an even higher score and that candy bottom blew it.
Rating: ***
No comments:
Post a Comment