La Bamboche

For several months now I have been eagerly awaiting the opening of La Bamboche at 1712 Avenue Road.  Whenever there is a new restaurant or bakery in the area, I get filled up with excessive amounts of excitement, hoping that my neighborhood will have gotten ourselves a real gem.  It looks like La Bamboche will finally be the gem we have been waiting for and will live up to all the hype.  After months of anticipation for the opening, I found out that they actually have another location in Toronto at 4 Manor Road East.  So of course, I had to check it out!  Just stepping into pastry chef Stephen Nason's little bakery feels like, what I would imagine it's like, stepping into a classy Parisian bakery.  The shop is filled with exquisite confections, cakes, tarts, quiches, preserves, and their famous macarons.  Attempting to describe the art that these delicious treats are transformed into would be pointless, as words cannot describe how beautiful each item is.  To see for yourself, check out La Bamboche's blog, which features many of their extraordinary confections.  

After much debate on what I should purchase from the store, I settled on getting a chocolate almond croissant and a blueberry danish.  Hands down, this was the best chocolate almond croissant I have ever tasted!  The buttery croissant was perfectly flaky and filled with layer upon layer of rich semisweet chocolate and delicious almond paste that genuinely tasted like real almond paste, and not that strange mixture of almond extract and marzipan that is often found in almond croissants.  The blueberry danish was made from the same flaky croissant pastry and was filled with fresh, big blueberries, bursting with flavour.  My mouth is watering all over again just thinking about how much I enjoyed them!  I just have to wait a little bit longer until I can walk on over to La Bamboche on a daily basis! La Bamboche's Avenue Road location opens mid-summer 2009.  See you there!