Shop Review: Nadege Patisserie

Yet another fine French pastry shop opens on Yonge Street just south of Summerhill.  Nadege joins Petite Thuet, Patachou, and the not quite only a patisserie, All the Best Fine Foods serving pastries and sandwiches for lunch.

While Nadege's website boasts coffee and fresh baked pastries, this Yonge location is a boutique with neatly placed goodies presented with an artist's eye. Read: No Coffee. It is easily the most artistic of the shops mentioned above.  I sampled three of the pastries and all were modern tastes using traditional techniques.  A dark chocolate pyramid cake and a bombe accented with l'espelette pepper were rich and had a daring punch not found in many traditional French pastries.  But does this area need another 6-9 dollar sandwich?

This place should take a note from the others and put in a sandwich press as their sandwiches are too cold.  Now, this might seem a quibble until you break it down.  I had two sandwiches that were served on croissants.  Croissants that are stored in the cold begin to seize, the butter hardens in the crust.  The brie and ham tasted like a cold piece of butter shoved into greasy piece of brioche toast.  My tongue can tell that the croissants are made the old fashioned folding way to create the crispy layers but the teeth feel one fused piece of bread.  Get a press to warm the delicate piece and bring back some of the joy or make it to order or make it just before lunch...maybe turn up the heat on the counter.  Anything will be better than this.

Some of the more delicate pastries such as the grapefruit and Earl Grey tart also suffer from the cold.  An instruction to the customer to let it sit out for twenty minutes may solve this problem of temperature.

So, I would recommend the goodies but skip the sandwiches.  Better and more reasonably priced sandwichy goodness abounds in the area.