I always forget how blessed I am to live in a multicultural city like Vancouver. You want French pastry? No worries. Vancity got you covered!
Here at Forêt Noire Pâtisserie, we picked out three pieces of cakes:
The Mille Feuille:
It's funny how when I visit Hong Kong, I'll always research on the best Mille Feuilles there. Today, I had my first ever Mille Feuille from Vancouver and it already surpassed some of the top notched pastry stores I had in Hong Kong. I mean with our historical influence from the French, how hard would it be for us to get authentic French pastry or cuisine right? Wasn't that my number one reason why I wanted to travel to Montreal for a proper French dine out (or as per my Montreal friend, "It's Québecois dining." Whatever.)? So what was I thinking when I was doing a Mille-Feuille-Hunt restricted only to HK?
Although I have never visited France to know what an authentic French pastry should taste like, I can tell by the vanilla cream that it's nothing like the ordinary. The majority of the filling I've had in a Mille Feuille in the past is usually sandwiched with a type of fruit (usually raspberry, strawberry or mango) with custard filling that's made out of egg yolks, milk or cream, and vanilla flavouring. From a Hong Kong style Napoleon cake, it's also common to layer the puff pastry with buttercream and nuts. The filling in this one was just vanilla cream. From the first bite, I could already tell that they've used real vanilla bean and that already justified the cost ($9 which is priced above normal pricing for a piece of cake in Vancouver). Vanilla bean is rather expensive.
If you are from Hong Kong, some of you may think that they are cheaping out on the ingredients from omitting the nuts or fruits. But I think the Patissier is so smart to do that because the fruits or nuts would have overpowered the vanilla flavour and would have totally stollen the whole show. The custard is creamy but not too filling; the rich vanilla flavour is brought out perfectly with the right amount of sweetness.
The layers of the puff pastry are tightly compressed rather than puffed up (the dough was possibly compressed with a heavy item during the baking process), and so the layers are extra crunchy. Unlike other Mille-Feuille, the puffy ones are more airy and light, but generally are less crispy. Frankly, I think I prefer this type of puff pastry.
A plain yet delicate vanilla filling nestled in between layers of buttery and crispy puff pastry. One bite but two savoured flavour - butter and vanilla. This piece of French pastry may appear to be a simple piece of cake to most of you, but if you are a baker, you would understand that the baking and composition of this are nothing but complicated.
The Broadway:
Although I have heavily emphasized my remarkable experience with the Mille Feuille, my favourite cake was in fact the Broadway - the chocolate cake (sorry, I like to process the flavours and consider the possible techniques when it comes to baking). The whole thing reminds me of a creamy truffle that quickly transforms into a silky chocolate mousse, and then it melts in your mouth. Apparently there's this vanilla Creme brûlée in it as well, but I could hardly tell that it was snuck in there with the richness of the dark chocolate (hmm, my favourite!). This chocolate decadence is perfect for any chocolate lover like me. Now I'm not going to dwell on the baking process on the Broadway since I'm pretty good at making chocolate cakes. I can easily replicate this so I'm just going to move on to the next piece.
The Exotic Flower:
The last piece that we tried was the exotic flower. We picked this one thinking that you can never go wrong with any passion fruit flavour desserts; and with mango and coconut, it sounded like it would have been the perfect combination. Besides, citric flavour cakes are usually less sweet, but we were so wrong. We didn't like this piece as much since it was too sweet to our liking. We would prefer it to be more tangy.
Conclusion:
Forêt Noire Pâtisserie (once again I don't know how to pronounce the name of this store; but that's how you know it's a French bakery), I have just bookmarked you as one of my favourites on google map :)
I'd also like to try out their salty caramel chocolate tart and white chocolate pistachio mousse next time.
So I have decided that I am going to go on a Mille Feuille hunt in Vancouver. I am going to go look up all those French Patisserie that I can't pronounce their store names and try it out. If it starts with Le or La in Canada, it's probably an actual French bakery.
Price: $8.99 per piece
Taste:
Mille Feuille: 4.7 / 5
The Broadway: 4.8 / 5
Exotic Flower: 3.9 / 5
Overall: 4.7/5
Atmosphere: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Seating: ⭐️⭐️
Price Performance ratio:
Overall: 4.4 / 5
Location: Here
Website: Here
