Seattle, WA – Bakery Nouveau

Restaurant: Bakery Nouveau
Cuisine: Bakery/Desserts
Last visited: January 15, 2010
Area: Seattle, WA (West Seattle)
Address: 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
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
• My 2nd review for Bakery Nouveau
• My 3rd review for Bakery Nouveau

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 since I live in Vancouver, BC.

Bakery Nouveau is a Parisian bakery in Seattle – again Kim (of I’m Only Here for the Food!) was kind enough to bring me back some goodies to try. I’m so lucky! 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 this could be the first 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 foodgasm coming up!

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.

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. Although pricey, they are quality desserts, and I think it’s worth it! They’re very well thought out, well executed and presented.

Added note: My 2nd review for Bakery Nouveau – featuring Pumpkin Bread and Snowball Cake.

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 –  it is made with ground almonds.
• The almond cream melts as it is being baked so the middle is very moist, chewy and sweet and not greasy at all.
• The bottom is really browned because it’s double baked so all the sugars are very caramelized to give it a richer deeper flavour and crust.
• I was literally licking the crumbs off my 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 do 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 combination.
• 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.
• I could cut myself the thinnest 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 fantastic and made with actual ground pistachio crumbs.
• The blueberry mousse was nice and light and made with real blueberries too.
• It’s nutty, creamy and rich in flavour, yet light in texture and easy to eat.
• The bottom 1/3 of this cake tastes like a Pistachio Kit Kat bar! There’s a crispy wafer like layer and it tastes like it’s made of ground up wafers and hazelnuts crumbs.

• 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 – 4.5/6

• $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: Cafe, Passion fruit, Chocolate, Raspberry, Pistachio, Coconut, Caramel, Salt Caramel, Blood Orange, Lemon and Cassis $1.50 USD (The description is from the website…it’s a pretty expensive macaroon and they’re pretty small though)

Coconut – 3/6

• 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 coconut extract. 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 macarons from Say See Bon better although they are almost exactly the same.
• The meringue isn’t as thin or delicate as Say See Bon.

**Passion Fruit – 4/6

• 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..
• Again it was a bit too sweet for me (the coconut was sweeter), but the flavour was so strong and so unique I would still recommend for people to try it.
• To see more Bakery Nouveau Parisian Macaron flavours, see my post here.

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