Ganache Patisserie – Bakery

Restaurant: Ganache Patisserie – Bakery
Cuisine: Desserts/Bakery
Last visited: February 14, 2010
Location: Vancouver, BC (Yaletown/Downtown)
Address: 1262 Homer Street
Transit: Yaletown-Roundhouse Stn Southbound
Price range: $10 or less

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

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

• Pastry chef and owner Peter Fong
• Seasonal cake menu
• Modern French patisserie
• Creative & elegant cakes
• Modern French cakes (w/twist)
• Baked on site
• Handmade chocolates/confections
• Whole cakes/Individual cakes
• Wedding cakes
• Baked goods to go/gift shop
• Limited seating
• Tues. – Fri. – 11am – 6pm
• Saturdays – 11am – 7pm
• Sundays – 11am – 5pm
• Mondays – 11am – 5pm

Recommendation: Caramel-Chocolat, Chocolat-Banane 

I’ve heard so many great things about Ganache Patisserie. Visually they are beautiful, but taste wise I feel like they could be better. 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 rather upscale bakery my expectations are higher than usual. It really reminded me of Kreation Artisan Cake which is another local bakery serving classic French cakes and pastries with a contemporary twist.

I enjoyed these cakes with 2 girlfriends and we all felt the same way about them. They were good, but not as amazing as we had hoped. When my friend asked the staff for recommendations, she actually suggested the more traditional items rather than the exotic cakes. It was a good suggestion because the more standard flavour cakes were stronger. I would still go back to try more but I wouldn’t crave anything I had because nothing was too memorable. I do recommend it, but I can be picky with desserts and I just wasn’t as blown away.

On the table:

Blanc Fraisier – 4/6

• Vanilla cake, vanilla sablé Breton, white chocolate black pepper mousseline, strawberries, passionfruit meringue $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 (As of May 5, 2012 – $5.95)
• 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 – 3.5/6

• Green tea mousse, mango-passionfruit gelée, lychees, black sesame biscuit joconde $5.50-5.75 (As of May 5, 2012 – $5.95)
• 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 – 5.5/6 

• Milk chocolate caramel mousse with hazelnut croquant, raspberry gelée, 75% Tanzanie dark chocolate mousse, praline crunch, chocolate biscuit $5.50-5.75 (As of May 5, 2012 – $5.95)
• This is another one of their popular cakes.
• It’s more traditional and I usually go for innovative so I wasn’t too excited about this one, but it was my faovurite 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.

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