Boulangerie la Parisienne

Restaurant: Boulangerie la Parisienne

Cuisine: Bakery/Desserts/Sandwiches
Last visited: October 15, 09
Area: Vancouver, BC
1076 Mainland St
Price Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 2 (Based on the few items I had)
Service: 3
Ambiance: 2

Overall: 2
Additional comments:

• Parisian bakery - not that authentic
• Located in Yaletown
• Items are baked at off-site bakery, few seem to be baked daily
  
• Few selections of pre-made sandwiches/baguettes and salads
• Homemade soups
• Large selection of pastries/cakes
• Low quality and standard
• Stale items
• Casual, eat in/take out

** Recommendation: n/a

Yikes, for a bakery with a French name in translation "The Parisian Bakery" - the French would be embarrassed. If you're going to take this title, I will have high expectations and you should be able to represent...and they didn't. I want to try and be fair...my review is based on only a few items so maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance. But based on those few items I was not impressed. All the items that can keep for a few days (eg: croissants, biscotti, cookies, banana bread etc.) really looks like it's been sitting there. It even looks stale, maybe becuase everything is imported from their off-site bakery. Everything sits in a display case for who knows how many days. It feels and tastes mass produced.

The pastries are not authentic and don't speak anything of real French bakeries. A selection of the baked goods look bought and the size of everything is Americanized. They're more like American pastries and they don't taste homemade. There's nothing French about it except for the name. The closest thing I've found thus far to an authentic French bakery is Boulangerie Cho Pain on Davie Street. This place blows Boulangerie la Parisienne out of the water.

On the table:

• Almond Croissant 2/6
• This is one of my favourite French pastries. I ate one every single day in Paris so I am very familiar with them. I was very disappointed in this one. It was definitely stale. The croissant wasn't flaky at all and when the croissant itself isn't good - then there's no way the pastry will be good. Nothing will be able to help it.
• There are no layers in the croissant pastry dough and it's almost bread-like. Really dense and a bit hard and dry because it was stale. You can tell just by the picture.
• You had to chew it rather than have it melt in your mouth. There was no flavour to it either. It wasn't sweet, buttery or anything. The ones at the grocery store taste better.
• The inside is filled with an almond paste filling, which was ok, it was kind of jam like though. The ratio of filling to croissant was off too - not enough filling, all you could taste was croissant. It wasn't spread evenly either.
• The only thing that was good was that there are a ton of almonds on top. Also the way the almonds stay on is becuase they use the almond paste as "glue" so you can a nice layer of almond paste underneath. The almonds aren't toasted though (they should be) so they're not as flavourful. I as ked her to warm it up in the oven and that didn't help either. It was $2.75 and not worth it.
  
• When you know what the real thing is - this one doesn't even compare. Try the one at Boulangerie Cho-Pain that's the closest I've gotten to the real thing.
• Homemade Tomato Soup 2/6
  
• It's homemade but they use a lot of canned tomatoes in it. There no cream but it has a creamy texture. There's probably a combination of canned crushed tomatoes and tomato paste. It's kind of bland and the only flavour is that tart tomato flavour. There's some dried herbs, but all in all it's nothing special. I do appreciate it being homemade though because I wouldn't think they would care enough to do it.
• The bread that they served it with wasn't even homemade...and I thought I was in a bakery! It was store bought - that's really sad...they should have just included a small slice of their baguette...which I don't even thi nk they make in house.

  

• Cous Cous 1/6
  
• Cous cous with chick peas, raisins, red bell pepper, celery and parsley.
  
• This was sitting in the display case and it looked pretty decent, but it wasn't.
  
• It was really bland, it tasted like plain cous cous. It looks flavourful, but I think they just used some turmeric powder to dye it and give it a yellow colour.
• It was heavy on the parsley and there were no other flavours - no salt, no pepper - nothing. They should have put more raisins and maybe even some toasted nuts pine nuts in it. Keeping it simple is fine, but it still needs to taste good.
• I actually ended up pouring half my cous cous into the tomato soup. Bother were so plain and bland on their own I decided to mix it up. It was better this way.
  
• Overpriced for $5.25 too.