Bakery Nouveau

Restaurant: Bakery Nouveau

Cuisine: Bakery/Desserts
Last visited: January 15, 2010
Area: Seattle, WA (West Seattle)
4737 California Ave SW
Price Range: $10 or less (USD)

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

Food: 6
Service: n/a (I wasn’t actually there)

Ambiance: n/a

Overall: n/a

Additional comments:

• Pastry chef William Leaman
• Pastries baked several times daily
• Famous bakery in Seattle
• Gourmet bakery
• Traditional desserts with a gourmet/West Coast twist
• Breads/Desserts/Pastries/Chocolates/Jam/Lunch
• Award winning desserts
• Natural ingredients
• Seasonal ingredients
• Gift baskets available
• Daily/Weekly/Holiday specials
• Dine in/Take-out
• Mon-Thurs 6am-7pm
• Fri 6am-9pm
• Sat 7am-9pm
• Sun 7am-7pm

**Recommendation: Geez...almost everything. The blueberry pistachio cake, double baked almond croissant, German chocolate cake with coconut, passion fruit macaroon.That's basically everything I tried and I recommend it all. When I go back I'm definitely trying the Phoenix and Praline Dream.

Have you ever liked something so much you were literally using your licked fingers to squeegee down the plate? This was definitely one of those times, and I had no shame doing it. I don’t know – maybe part of it was me knowing that I couldn’t easily get these amazing desserts again.

Nouveau Bakery is a Parisian bakery in Seattle – again Kim was kind enough to bring back some goodies for me to try…and thank god he did. This bakery is known as one of the best bakeries in Seattle. Winner of numerous awards the pastry chef William Leaman is also the 2005 World Cup of Baking Gold Medal Winner.

Holy crap I don’t know what I did to deserve Christmas all over again. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but I think could be the 1^st time I’ve given a restaurant 6/6. I did only try 4 things, which to me is a decent sample, and everything was equally amazing…I don’t know how many times I “OMGGGGGGGG” – seriously food orgasm coming up!

I looked at the online menu because since I wasn’t actually there to do the ordering I didn’t know exactly what I tried. It markets itself as an authentic Parisian bakery, and the majority of their items are very French – however there definitely are some global influences in there. I don’t know many, if at all any authentic French bakery that serves up pizzas, carrot cakes and Pistachio blueberry cakes! The last one is definitely a West Coast fusion thing that I would expect to see at Kreation Artisan Cake, a bakery in Vancouver.

Authenticity is a big deal to me, but did it bother me this time? No. Authentic or not, Nouveau Bakery has amazing cakes and pastries and I almost want to make the 2 hour drive to Seattle right now to try more things. If you’re not going to like something, I think it’ll be partly because you think you’ve paid too much for it…they’re quite pricey…but it is a quality dessert, so I think it’s worth it! They're very well thought out, well executed and presented.

On the table:

Double Baked Almond Croissant 6/6

• Our classic croissant soaked in simple syrup and filled with delicious almond cream. It is topped with sliced almonds and additional almond cream $3.85 USD

• It’s double baked to make a very chewy nougat like croissant. It’s very tightly packed layers of crisp flaky pastry.

  

• It’s sweet, but not too sweet and it's wonderfully nutty and dense. It’s almost like a giant almond nougat or almond caramel because the almond cream isn’t really a cream but almost like a paste – I think it’s made with marzipan and ground almonds.
• The middle is very moist and really not greasy at all. I’m surprised!
• The bottom is really browned because it’s double baked so all the sugars are very caramelized to give it a richer deeper flavour.

• I was literally licking the crumbs off my plate and off Kim’s plate. I actually want to lick the screen right now.
  

  

Blueberry and Pistachio Cake 6/6

• $5.50 USD
• If I’m going to die after eating something…it could be after this cake. If heaven tastes this good how to I get there sooner?! It’s so good I could almost give it a 7/6. Seriously I almost hate myself for being lucky enough to try it. Mind you I do love pistachio and blueberries…so the two together were a delicious concoction.
• I don’t have the exact description but I would say it’s alternate layers of Pistachio cake with blueberry mousse. It’s almost like a twist on a French style napoleon because it has a puff pastry like layer on top too.

• Unlike local bakery Boulangerie Cho-Pain their top layer of puff pastry is perfect! I could cut myself the tiniest slice with the fork without the mousse squishing out the sides or having to remove the top layer. It was nice and soft, and it's not even a puff pastry, but it's the easiest way to describe it.
• The pistachio cake is awesome with real crumbs of pistachio. The blueberry mousse was nice and light and made with real blueberries too. It’s nutty, creamy and rich in flavour.
• The bottom 1/3 of this cake tastes like a Pistachio Kit Kat bar! There’s a brown wafer like layer and it tastes like it’s made of ground up very crispy wafers, ground up hazelnuts and maybe even a little bit of chocolate although the chocolate is very subtle if it’s in there

• It's the texture of ground up Chinese egg rolls and gave the cake a crispy crunch. They weren't hard, but delicate and I’m so surprised they weren’t soggy either. It’s seriously AMAZING and pleasantly unexpected.
• No part of this cake needs adjusting.

  

German Chocolate Cake 2/6

• $5.50 USD
• I don’t have the exact description but it’s layers of rich dense chocolate cake with layers of coconut walnut caramel filling.
• This chocolate cake is an extremely moist chocolate cake and it was perfectly sweet for me. It looks much more sweet than it actually is. It’s not very bitter so was probably a 68% cocoa or so. It wasn’t a milk chocolate nor was it a dark chocolate cake batter. It’s a rather light cake with a rich chocolate taste that lingers.
• The layer of caramel coconut cream is amazing! They use loads of fresh coconut and tons of chopped walnuts in it. It’s almost like a thick chewy coconut caramel nougat with walnuts. It’s amazing.
• Eaten together nothing is overpowering and I tasted every single ingredient from the crunchy walnuts to the juicy coconut shreds. It made the cake extra moist.

Parisian Macaroons 4/6

• These traditional Parisian cookies are light and airy. They are rumored to be the best outside of Paris! Flavor choices vary by day and feature: Café, Passion fruit, Chocolate, Raspberry, Pistachio, Coconut, Caramel, Salt Caramel, Blood Orange and Cassis $1.50 USD (The description is from the website...it’s a pretty expensive macaroon and they’re pretty small though)
• Coconut 4/6
• The coconut macaroon tastes like almond macaroon to me. That’s probably because there is almond in it. I wouldn't have guessed coconut until I saw the listed flavours though.
  
• I think they could have used real ground up dried coconut in this macaroon. It's obvious once you know the flavour is coconut, otherwise it's hard to put your finger on it.
  
• It’s very sweet. For me a bit too sweet to the point of hurting your teeth. It’s the almond coconut cream in the middle that was very sweet for me. I like the macaroons from Say See Bon better although they are almost exactly the same. They’re just as chewy and they even look the same.
• The meringue isn’t as thin or delicate as Say See Bon because the crispiness is more like a cookie than it was a meringue.
• Passion Fruit 5/6
• Wow! This really tastes like passion fruit! Seriously when you take a bite and start chewing it starts melting away and it tastes like passion fruit juice! I loved this one and it was so unique I’ve never seen it before.
• Again it was a bit too sweet for me (but the coconut sweeter), but the flavour was so strong and so unique I would still recommend for people to try it.