Patisserie Lebeau

Restaurant: Patisserie Lebeau
Cuisine: Bakery/Dessert/Cafe
Last visited: February 1, 2010
Area: Vancouver, BC (Robson Street/West End/Downtown)
Address: 1728 West 2nd Avenue
Price range: $10 or less

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

Food: n/a
Service: 3
Ambiance: 4
Overall: 5
Additional comments:

• Family owned
• Famous for waffles
• Authentic Belgian waffles
• Made with butter/natural ingredients
• Unbleached flour, pure vanilla
• No additives/preservatives
• Savoury foods available: quiche/sandwiches etc
• Pay at cashier
• Fresh baked breads
• Baked daily
• Homemade/home baked
• Ready to eat or sold frozen
• Seats 20-30
• Located around industrial area
• Available for wholesale

Recommendation: Any of their Belgian waffles or Leige waffles (several flavours)

My friend had first introduced me to this bakery by bringing me some waffles from the store. However I managed to discover the actual location quite randomly. I noticed it while driving around that area and I took a quick stop to check it out. I saw the “Authentic Belgian waffle” sign outside and as soon as I walked in I noticed the display case full of them. I put one and one together and was really pleased that I had found it. It’s kind of located in a small industrial/office area on West 2nd so It’s not an obvious location people would know about. It’s one of those word or mouth places that you would feel lucky to find.

It’s a great place for a quick lunch or coffee break. They have some sweet and savoury baked goods and sandwiches and a nice café set up in the front. It was actually decently busy from local businesses during lunch but the line-up goes fast and there’s actually a lot of seats inside.

They are most known for their waffles obviously. The website claims that they’re a “healthy snack” because it’s made with natural ingredients…but I highly doubt they are healthy or recommended for a healthy diet…even if they’re all natural.

I’ve been to Brussels before so I am very lucky to have tried the real deal…these are quite close to the real deal, but they’re not as moist. I would go back to try more stuff because I believe that they can do better then what I had. Let’s go in detail…

On the table

White Chocolate Lemon (Liege) Waffle – 4/6

• $2.80
• I would give a 5.5/6 (a bit dry) to their original leige waffle, but not for this white chocolate lemon one.
• There was no white chocolate…at all. I was expecting white chocolate chips throughout the batter but there wasn’t. I’m not sure if they melted the white chocolate right into the batter but I couldn’t taste any so I doubt it.
• It smelt like lemons though and I could taste the fresh lemon zest and see it.
• The best part of these waffles is the sugar crystals which they call “pearl sugar” – a sugar that’s made in Belgium. I call them sugar crystals – they’re basically tiny clumps of sugar that’s all natural. Some of them melt into the dough and some of them stay clumped and create “crystals”. So when you eat it you bite into little clumps of sugar that are delicious! They’re not hard like rock sugar, but they’re slightly crunchy like little balls of sugar soaked in sugar syrup.
• The sugar crystals that do melt during the baking process end up coating the outside of these waffles and make them crispy.
• It sounds sweet and it is, but not overly sweet at all.
• It’s really dense and heavy and it was almost bread-like because they’re made from yeast. It was like a dense lemon cake.
• As good as these waffles are they could be better because they’re a bit dry.

Peach and Custard Waffle – 2.5/6

• Brussels waffles stuffed with peach and custard $3.55 (I think)
• I was actually pretty disappointed by this. It’s their most popular stuffed waffle so I had high expectations.
• The biggest disappointment is because they used canned peaches.

• It’s actually a pretty heavy and dense waffle. My friend had bought them that afternoon and they’re baked fresh daily. We were eating them about 6 hours later and by then they were already a bit hard, stale and quite dry. I don’t think that should have happened that quickly…I don’t know though maybe it’s because they’re “all natural” that they go stale so quickly as well.

• The custard is almost like a pastry cream. It’s super thick and almost like a pudding. It’s light tasting though because it’s not that sweet. I wanted a stronger vanilla taste though. I couldn’t see any vanilla bean seeds so I think they just use pure vanilla extract.
• There is a lot of stuffing in the waffle, but I just wish it was real peaches…it cheapened it.
• This one has no sugar crystals, it’s more bread like.

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