Ganache Patisserie - Bakery

Restaurant: Ganache Patisserie - Bakery

Cuisine: Desserts/Bakery

Last visited: February 14, 2010
Area: Vancouver, BC (Yaletown/Downtown)

1262 Homer Street
Range: $10 or less

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

Food: 4.5 (but I think there's better I haven't tried)

Service: n/a

Ambiance: 4

Overall: 4.5

Additional comments:

• Opened December 2003
• Pastry chef and owner Peter Fong
• Gourmet/high-end Parisian bakery in Yaletown
• Creative/exotic/posh cakes
• Modern French cakes (w/twist)
• Quality/seasonal ingredients
• Chocolates
• Menu changes, seasonal cakes
• Whole cakes/mini individual serving cakes
• Wedding cakes
• Baked goods to go/gifts
• Take-out only, very few seats if any
• Croissants available Friday-Sunday
• Tues-Fri. 11am-7pm
• Sat. 11am-9pm
• Sun. 11am-5pm
• Closed Mondays

**Recommendation: Caramel-Chocolat, Chocolat-Banane (popular choice, but haven’t tried this one)

I’ve heard so many great things about Ganache Patisserie, I haven’t come across one person that doesn’t love it. Visually they are masterpieces, but taste wise…I’m not so sure. I would rather have Bakery Nouveau. I can’t say I was disappointed by Ganache Patisserie, but I also wasn’t as impressed as I thought I would be. Since it is a gourmet/high-end bakery my expectations are higher than usual…as it should be for places like these. It really reminded me of Kreation Artisan Cake – classic French cakes and pastries with a contemporary twist.

My friend brought them over and I indulged in all of them with 2 of my girlfriends. We all felt the same way about each cake…and we’re good judgment of desserts. They’re good, but not OMG sooooo good…except for the caramel-chocolat. When my friend asked the staff what she recommended she actually listed the more traditional items rather than the exotic cakes. I guess I just need to try the less original items next time because I was a little underwhelmed by the exotic ones. So I would still go back to try more but I wouldn’t crave anything because nothing was too memorable either. I do recommend it, but I've been really spoiled with great desserts...so I have had better...not necessarily in Vancouver though...so this is still good!

I didn’t have the descriptions while trying them so I was relying on my taste buds to pick out all the flavours. We each had a 1/3 of every cake so it was a decent sample and representation.

On the table:

Blanc Fraisier 4/6

• Vanilla cake, vanilla sablé Breton, white chocolate black pepper mousseline, strawberries, passionfruit meringue $5.50-5.75
• They say that this is everyone’s favourite and it’s one of their best sellers.
• It tasted like strawberry shortcake to me. The cake layers were drier and very much like shortcake cake.
• It was almost like custard or layers or pastry cream with fresh strawberries in between the shortcake layers. There wasn’t much strawberry though.
• It was creamier then it was mousse like. I couldn’t taste the black pepper or any sort of spiciness. I couldn’t tell it was white chocolate either.
• I also couldn’t tell it was passionfruit meringue although it was fluffy and marshmallow like. I liked the texture.
  

Guava Exotique 3.5/6

• Strawberry guava mousse, lychees, pineapple financier sponge $5.50-5.75
• This one reminded me of an Asian cake. It was mousse like and the mousse is the light airy mousse they make at Chinese bakeries.
• I definitely couldn’t taste the pineapple and didn’t know it was in there until reading the description.
  

• It was nice and moist and the lychee really stood out. There were little pieces of lychee throughout the cake and I liked the texture eating it with the mousse.
• I could taste the guava and it was a very floral and fragrant cake.
• I’d order it again, but it wouldn’t be my first choice. I’d rather try something else before ordering this again.
  

Matcha-Exotique 3/6

• Green tea mousse, mango-passionfruit gelée, lychees, black sesame biscuit joconde $5.50-5.75
• I was very excited about this one! One of my girlfriends had tried it as a whole cake and apparently it’s better that way because they make it in layers instead of a bomb cake where the flavours didn’t mesh together as well.
• This one is too bitter. They use so much Matcha and black sesame that it became bitter. It was definitely fresh and quality ingredients, but the flavour became overpowering rather than complementing.
  

• The black sesame cake was a bit dry and crumbly in texture too. It made the whole cake taste a bit powdery especially with the green tea mousse which is also made with Matcha powder.
• The mango passionfruit was almost like a jello but denser. It was made with frehs puree and it was very tangy and also sweet. The cake tasted much better if you ate it with the jello, but it was hard to portion because there wasn’t much of it. The mango and passion fruit helped to break up the bitterness.
• There were also little bits of lychee in this one, but I lost the flavour because of the Matcha and sesame. I only knew because of the texture.
  

**Caramel-Chocolat 6/6

• Milk chocolate caramel mousse with hazelnut croquant, raspberry gelée, 75% Tanzanie dark chocolate mousse, praline crunch, chocolate biscuit $5.50-5.75
• This is another one of their popular cakes. It’s more traditional and I usually go for exotics so I wasn’t too excited about this one…little did I know it would be the best of the 4. It was all of our favourites.
• 

• It was moist, creamy, moussey, rich and perfect in texture.
• There was a great combination of chocolates and levels of sweetness. The hazelnut was obvious and the raspberry was so little, but so potent.
• It was chocolatey, nutty, and tangy – I would order this again for sure.
• It was the sweetest of all the cakes, but since it was dark chocolate it wasn’t overly sweet. It was definitely most indulgent and I was happy to at least end off on a good note.