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An Amazing Croissant at La La Bakeshop

Published on August 6, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 3272 Midland Avenue, Scarborough
Website: https://www.lalabakeshop.ca/

La La Bakeshop is a thoroughly delightful bakery that melds French and Vietnamese flavours, mostly through its assortment of Asian-inspired croissants (though they do have several other cakes and desserts, and everything looked great).

I went with the condensed milk croissant, which certainly isn’t a taste combo that I would have thought of. But oh man. It was insanely delicious.

Mostly, it’s the croissant. There are roughly a billion bakeries in the GTA where you can find a croissant, but most of them aren’t much better than okay. Frequently, the texture isn’t quite right, or they’re not buttery enough, or they’re not fresh enough, or they’re just… not good.

The croissant here was remarkable. Perfect texture — it’s super flaky and crispy, with just the right level of tenderness and heft on its interior. Great buttery flavour. Legitimately one of the best croissants I’ve had in the GTA.

It’s filled with a pretty generous amount of gooey, oozy condensed milk, and you’d think it would be too sweet, but somehow, it isn’t. The croissant and the condensed milk work so well together that I’m shocked I’ve never seen this combination before. It would be a tasty combo with even a lesser croissant, but with a croissant of this quality? It’s a contender for the best pastry in the GTA.

Great Baked Goods at Brodflour

Published on July 29, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 8 Pardee Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://brodflour.com/

Brodflour is a delightful little bakery in Liberty Village that sells sandwiches, pastries, and outstanding loaves of sourdough bread. They might actually sell my favourite loaf of bread in the city — it’s thoroughly delicious, and unlike a lot of other bakeries that sell higher-end sourdough loaves, they actually offer to slice it.

(Yes, surprisingly enough, there are an unnerving number of fancy bakeries in the city that sell $10+ loaves of bread and refuse to slice them for you.)

I tried the smoked salmon sandwich (“Jerusalem bagel, house-made labneh, capers, pickled onions, salt and pepper, tomatoes”), which is tasty. The bagel is maybe slightly too dense, but they’re clearly using good smoked salmon, and all of the ingredients work really well together (I’m normally not a fan of onion with smoked salmon, but pickling them takes away most of that raw onion harshness). It’s not a mind-blowing sandwich, but it’s quite good.

What was mind-blowing was the cardamom knot. Oh man this thing was tasty. It’s sweet but not too sweet, the pastry has a really great chewy texture that’s not too dense, and the sugar on the outside gives it a nice texture that contrasts with the chewy interior. That’s not to mention the cardamom flavour, which is delightfully intense. It’s a great, great pastry.

Filipino Desserts at Purple Oven Cakes & Pastries

Published on July 24, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 780 Burnhamthorpe Road West, Mississauga
Website: https://www.purpleoven.ca/

Purple Oven is a great little Filipino bakery in Mississagua. It’s one of those hidden gems that you’d absolutely, positively never find unless you’re specifically looking for it — it’s hidden around the corner in a plaza on Burnhamthorpe (I’ve actually been to this plaza a few times, and I didn’t even realize that this part of it existed).

I hope they’re still managing to do okay, because I tried a few pastries and they were all quite tasty.

The most interesting of the three was the cheesy ensaymada, which is essentially a brioche bun topped with buttercream icing and shredded cheese. Salty cheese on dessert is a bit of an odd combo, but it’s got that sweet/salty thing going on and is actually surprisingly delicious.

The ube cheesecake bar was basically like a chewy brownie, but with ube instead of chocolate. It also has a mildly funky flavour (like a stinky cheese?) that was odd, but not unappealing.

The last thing I tried was an ube cupcake, which was similar to the cheesecake bar, but without the funkiness. This was also quite tasty, though the dense cookie on top made it basically impossible to eat without squashing the frosting all over the place.

Quick Bites: Union Chicken, Poke Poke, Bake Code

Published on June 16, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Nashville Lightning Hot sandwich from Union Chicken

I had the Buffalo chicken sandwich from Union back in 2019 and found it to be absolutely delightful; well, I recently tried the Nashville hot chicken sandwich, and yeah, it’s very, very good. It’s got that same addictive combo of exterior crunchiness and interior juiciness, and it’s really tasty, with a nice zippy flavour that cuts through the richness of the chicken. The toasted bread it comes on was a bit dry/boring, and I wish the sandwich were spicier (it’s barely hotter than mild), but overall it’s a superlative fried chicken sandwich.

Poke from Poke Poke

Poke Poke is thoroughly okay. I had the O.G. bowl (“classic salmon, seaweed salad,
avocado, corn, edamame, masago”) on white rice (brown rice, cauliflower rice, greens, and noodles are also choices), and it was perfectly tasty. Nothing about it particularly blew me away (it’s a bit overstuffed with toppings and understuffed with salmon — given that it came up to just over twenty bucks with tax, a more generous helping of fish would have been nice), but I’m not mad I ate it.

Salted Egg Yolk Croissant from Bake Code

I tried the PB&J croissant from Bake Code a few years ago and enjoyed it, though I found the croissant itself to be just okay. I have very similar thoughts about the salted egg yolk croissant, which features a generous amount of tasty, custardy filling, but is otherwise nothing too mind-blowing. I’m also not convinced that a croissant is a better vehicle for this particular filling than a more traditional bun, but I can’t deny that it’s tasty.

Great Pastries at Fragrant Bakery

Published on May 28, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 3833 Midland Avenue, Scarborough
Website: None

I recently watched this video about a Chinese pastry called a wife cake; I’d never even heard of this before, but figured it was a safe bet that it was available somewhere in the GTA.

And indeed, Fragrant Bakery — a tiny hole-the-wall bakery in Scarborough — serves the stuff.

A wife cake (which is probably closer to a pie than a cake) features a filling made of winter melon, sesame seeds, and coconut that’s wrapped in a flaky dough. It’s really unique, with a mildly chewy texture, a restrained sweetness, and a slight savouriness that sets it apart from your average sweet pastry.

I’d also heard good things about the egg tart here, so I tried one; I’m generally not crazy about Hong Kong egg tarts (true to their name, I find them to be a bit too eggy), but if you like them, this is a really good one. The crust is super flaky and fresh, and the filling is luxuriously silky.

This place does well (there was a line to get in when I showed up), and it’s easy enough to see why.