Location: David Lam Park, Yaletown
So just to ease your worries that I'm some unstoppable eating freak, I visited the Home & Interior Design Show at the convention centre to get my metabolism back to where it needed to be, before I hit up dessert. That being said, being in that area necessitated a visit to my favourite gelateria, Bella Gelateria. That's a review for another day.
Clutching my cone of delightfully creamy almond gelato, I made my way to the Canada Line, onwards to Yaletown, an area of town that used to house some of the most innovative eats in town, but is now more known for overpriced, lukewarm conceptualized, mediocre restaurants, with a restaurant failure rate that would make your head spin. Don't get me wrong - there's still great food to be had (Cioppino's, Blue Water, Ganache, etc) but I've long since moved on from classifying Yaletown as a true foodie destination. The final nail to the coffin was the arrival of eponymous-local-steakhouse-king The Keg.
With that in mind, I made my way to the former location of LiveCity Yaletown, David Lam Park - now restored back to its former green glory. There sitting at the intersection of Pacific and Drake is a lone retired yellow school bus advertising freshly made croissant creations. A little background - I have notoriously high croissant standards. I will not accept soft, stale, mushy croissants - I want an explosion of crumbs, followed by a ethereal wave of buttery goodness with every bite. Chef Peter Fong's Ganache on Homer stands as some of the best I've ever had.
How do these little crescents baked in a school bus pair up? A good crunch, but lacking in any depth of flavour. Pedestrian at best, and at $3 a piece, a rip-off considering Ganache only charges $2.50 for theirs, and the comparison isn't even close: like comparing a picture of the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas to the real one in Paris.
They have a variety of stuffings available, and I tried out the Mac N Cheese special, as well as the cheesecake. The croissants were heated up, then filled to order - an appreciated nod to quality and detail. The Mac N Cheese unfortunately were a non-presence: beyond bland and dry. I took 2 bites and stopped. That's BIG in my world. I have a thing about finishing everything on my plate, and to leave a croissant uneaten? Unheard of. That's how bad this was.
The cheesecake fared moderately better. A bar of cheesecake, and 2 ladyfingers were sandwiched inside. The cheesecake tasted good, but the ladyfingers were just there. Ladyfingers need some kind of sauce to absorb, it's not the type of thing you eat on your own really (tiramisu), so this really needed one more component to tie everything together. There was an option for strawberry jam, among others, for 50 cents, but that should've been included to begin with. Jack the price up to $4.50 fine, but leaving a dish incomplete is worse.
To his credit, the young Taiwanese gentleman running the operation asked for my opinion and he seemed responsive and appreciative (if not a tad surprised) at my response. Hopefully he takes some of my advice to heart - novelty will only get you so far, especially with a Dairy Queen a few steps away.
Next review will be the one-and-only Roaming Dragon - check for it on Monday!
1 comment:
Hi there, sorry I haven't noticed this post before, the "pan da" threw us off. First off, thank you for visiting, the biggest problem affecting us in the street food program is that people are sometimes unwilling to try something new. I'm sorry you didn't like the Mac and Cheese, when was this visit? Judging by the pictures this visit was back when we first introduced our M+C, since then we have changed our recipe 3-4 times. We take every comment to heart and the first complaints were that it was bland and we have since fixed that problem.
We try to make fillings that will satisfy "most" appetites and if it doesn't do that then its back to the drawing board. That Jam in cheesecake idea is very interesting and we'll definitely look into adding it as a free option for cheesecake, just that not everyone is a fan of strawberry jam.
If you have any other suggestions we would love to hear it, either here, twitter, in person, whatever. We love constructive criticism so do your best :)
-Derek Ip
PanDa Fresh Bakery
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