Help! I need suggestions! It’s true, I love dessert and I often don’t have it. There’s nothing as bitterly disappointing as a fruit cup at a good restaurant. I don’t care what kind of sorbet you serve with it. A half cup of mango purée with ice and sugar is a punishment (optimistic people would say a “torturous lesson in self-discipline) when the person sitting across from you is allowed a veritable mountain of Pain Perdu dripping in luxurious vanilla ice cream and maple syrup. If over half the world’s inhabitants are at least slightly lactose-intolerant, then the dessert chefs are not catching up to the times. So there are very few places in this city where my stomach and head get along. Example:
Stomach says, “Cream! Butter! Sugar!”
Head says “Foolish child. You know you can’t digest that.”
So Stomach and Head have a tea and a dairy-free dry biscuit and weigh the short-term gain versus the long term pain. All very rational. But sometimes things don’t go as smoothly, and Head says:
“How can you possibly be so head-strong when I disagree?” but promptly quiets down when it tastes the first bite of warm fleur de sel caramel brownie topped with old-style Vanilla ice cream from Juliette et Chocolat…Some days when this type of conversation happens, I go to bed with Head shaking itself, saying “I told you so!” and Stomach meekly admitting defeat and regretting every moment of chocolate-eating, except the first bite. Never the first bite.
Some days Stomach wins and Head shrugs, “Go figure? You should be sick now…and yet…” So it’s a gamble and this seems to run in my family. The lactose-intolerance and the gambling, I mean.
…and I had a point…hmm…
Oh yes, I remember. I don’t eat as much dessert as I would if I could, and I review food, and I want to do a review of the best desserts in Montreal. This is a conundrum. I am actually willing to sample small amounts of dairy-laden desserts for the good of Montreal readers, but since I’ve only been here two years, I haven’t had enough opportunities to go after forbidden fruit. So I don’t know all the hidden gems of the city’s sweet-tooth. This is where you, the facilitator, comes in. I need recommendations, stories, addresses and names. The more information the better. When you think cake in Montreal, what do you envision?
In addition, I’m being particular. Here are my criteria:
1. A place that serves an individual piece of cake or pie or cheesecake (not little individual pastries, mille-feuilles, croissants and danishes like Première Moisson)
2. Not a counter patisserie. There must be somewhere to sit to enjoy this piece of cake. Even Cocoa Locale, who’s renowned as the best cake-maker in the city, shouldn’t really count as you can’t sit and enjoy a single piece. You must buy a whole cake and take it to go. Though some cakes are smaller, they are still not meant to be eaten in a single sitting.
3. Preferably it should be open in the evening to have dessert after dinner. This is just to eliminate the bakery-style places and focus on café-style locations.
4. Somewhere you would go to celebrate a special occasion, but could also walk in on your own, and would certainly walk in because the place is known for its desserts
5. Not a fine dining restaurant with a ridiculously good pastry chef (a dessert sampling platter is not the kind of semi-casual indulgence I’m looking for)
6. Home made! Not factory-made. I’m on the fence about places like Rockaberry, Calories and Cheaters Dessert Bar. Definitely not worthy of the top of the list.
Here’s what I have so far:
1. Le Figaro (Croissanterie)
2. Le Cagibi
3. Mamie Clafoutis
4. Crudessence
5. Cocoa Locale
6. Bilboquet
7. Cafe Beleze
8. Au Festin De Babette
8. Juliette et Chocolat
9. Calories
10. Cheaters Premium Dessert Bar
11. Rockaberry Tart
Le Figaro: I thought this was just a croissant and pastry place, but no, it makes its own beautiful cakes, is open late, encourages lingering, has a beautiful atmosphere (and terrasse in summer) and, well, is perfect if you can/choose to digest cream. You should eat their chocolate mousse cake. Three layers of…oh just eat it. Everything made fresh. All delicious.
Le Cagibi: Great atmosphere and great home-made desserts. They have a beautiful glass cake container that sits prominently on the end of their counter. It’s not made there…but it is obviously home made (you can tell by the shape of the icing) and often the chili-laced brownies are brought in from Cocoa Locale.
Mamie Clafoutis: This is the sunniest, quietest, warmest place to hang out with dessert and a coffee, alone or in a group. Somewhere between a café and a take-out patisserie (I didn’t know they had an upstairs full of plush chairs and games nights until a few days ago), this place won’t sell you a piece of cake, but the Clafoutis are so unique and the atmosphere is so conducive to sitting and enjoying your dessert that I had to count it. Besides, it’s open into the evening, meaning it’s more than a place to pick up a sweet or loaf of bread and go. Definitely worth an after-dinner trip.
Cocoa Locale: Amazing date cake. Everyone seems to love the Valhora Chocolate cake, but I’m not sold on it. The chili brownies you can often find at Le Cagibi, your only option if you want to sit to eat that piece of dense chocolate. Since there’s no actual place to eat in the shop, I only include it because you can buy her desserts at other places that think chairs are good ideas. Probably it’s a good idea to keep nosy patrons out of your store post-purchase if your tiny kitchen is also your sales counter and you have a million cakes to bake by the end of the day. Let somewhere else encourage sitting.
Cafe Beleze: The owner here can be very rude…but even if he can’t tell you what’s in the cakes and loaves, and tells a lactose-intolerant person that maybe she should buy a piece of cake and see what it’s like instead of asking so many annoying questions (very not okay), the cake shouts “home-made”. One answer he did give was that the chocolate layer cake was made by a friend. No factory involved in this one, and it again showed in the roughly-applied icing. Way more love went into that cake than a cookie-cutter cake from Rockaberry…now if only the owner weren’t so mean.
Bilboquet: Known for incredible ice cream (the original store on Bernard in Outremont serves bigger scoops than the one in Westmount or what you’ll get at Java U…), the other desserts here are not to be missed. Though you’re not going to walk in and start sharing an ice cream cake between a group of friends (hmm…), you get a beautiful choice of baked goods large enough to qualify as a dessert indulgence equivalent to a piece of cake. They may even have a cake that day.
Crudessence: Pop in any time of day for mousse, key lime pie or blueberry cheesecake (or whatever the chef has created) and enjoy a very different kind of guilty pleasure. Their desserts are refined sugar-free and are all vegan, but you’d never know the cheesecake was made with macademia and cashew nut purée until you’re done and instead of feeling gittery from a sugar high, you feel full for the next 5 hours. Very full, and glowing.
Honourable mention:
Best Baklava: Afroditi Bakery. Not the Middle Eastern kind you find all over the city from take-out places to grocery stores, this baklava is the Greek version and comes swimming in honey syrup. More like a gooey pouding chomeur than a dry Christmas cake. If you live more downtown, you can also find their baklava at the PA Supermarket on rue du Fort. (I’ve heard tell that Ambrosia actually has the best baklava, but it’s in Laval, not Montreal, so doesn’t quite qualify for the competition. It definitely shouldn’t be ignored, though). So baklava isn’t cake, obviously, but you really can go to Afroditi and sit in a great space to enjoy your dessert of choice. The cakes you need to buy whole, putting this more in line with Première Moisson in terms of a place for buying and eating pastry with your Grandmother, but Première Moisson has nothing on the baklava, AND these guys are open late, encouraging a post-dinner excursion.
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