I had the toughest time to match my schedule with Patrice Patissier opening hours. They close at ~5-6pm during the weekend!

If only I counted how many times Victor from Montreal Food Pictures told me to go to Patrice Patissier!

Patrice is known as a former pastry chef working at 400 Coups, and now he opens his own restaurant focusing on his talents, of course. The restaurant can be viewed like a coffee shop, with a counter filled with mouth watering pastries.

On a rainy Saturday, I stepped in and directly witnessed the kitchen in action. Patrice was working too! I still believe that Patrice made our grilled cheese (we saw him handling the panini press).

We could either go directly to the counter and take out some pastries or sit in and order from the menu.

I did not know what to order so I picked whatever appealed to me the most. I saw many Chou a crème packing away for take-out. That must be their best seller, I thought. I came in with high expectation, and therefore did not want to risk it and order something that was mediocre.

So Chou a la crème it is!

I’ve never had one. So, my best way to describe it would be “It’s like a crustier cronut pipped with the smoothiest cream”. But unlike a cronut, there is not much dough in between the cream and the outer crust. I find the cream is the most important part of this pastry. The crust is only acting a complement to the cream. The filling was a mixture of real pieces of banana and chocolate and it was delicious.

But is it something that I would crave? This is not personally the type of pastries that I fall hard for. It was good, but nothing I would go crazy.

Mr.Butter was hungry and ordered a grilled cheese on top of a Kouign Amann (yes! They serve Kouign Amann here too!)

The grilled cheese was very cheesey. We could see two big slices of aged  cheddar cheese were put in. The cameralized onions just made it so much better. Definitely a gourmet grilled cheese.

I was surprised that this was actually Kouign Amann. My first one was at Kouign Amann and looked like nothing like this. This Kouign Amann was filled with cherries and chocolate. It was nothing like I expected, very different from Kouign Amann. Because I already had my mind set that it should taste like Kouign Amann, I was disappointed. Mr.Butter still enjoyed it. This pastry only made me crave the Kouign Amann from Kouign Amann. Now, that is my type of pastry I go crazy for.

I still have yet tried their dessert menu (different from their pastries) and I heard they were amazing. Next time.

Their pastries are high-end and I could tell they aced every aspect. But due to personal preference, I don’t think I would ever long for one of these in the future.

Zuuchini