Bakery Review: Jean Philippe Patisserie - Las Vegas

Jean Philippe Patisserie - visited June 21-23, 2017 at the Aria in Las Vegas, Nevada

This will be one of those heavy food porn posts. I’d rather let the pictures speak for themselves but I’ll throw in my random commentary. I had a teambuilding offsite in Vegas (awesome perk, yeah?) and as luck and my baking-magnet universe would have it, we stayed at the Aria. Where, upon checking in and as I headed towards the elevator bank to go to my room, I discovered, right at the foot of the elevators, that there was a Jean Philippe Patisserie.

You can bet I had done my homework before leaving for Vegas with “homework” being looking up which bakeries I can walk to on the Strip. I’ve been to Vegas multiple times so I wasn’t unfamiliar with the bakery landscape. I knew about Carlo’s and Bouchon and had gone to both before. But it was my first time staying at the Aria and having Jean Philippe Patisserie right there was like getting instant nourishment for my foodie soul.

They’re open 24 hours – hey, it’s Vegas – and although I had arrived later at night and had already had dinner before my flight, that didn’t stop me from visiting the patisserie within minutes of dumping my carry-on in my room. It was on the edge of the casino and was doing a brisk business. I had to take a ton of pictures since I was on sensory overload and capturing the images to enjoy later was my way of handling all that sugary input.

Well, sort of. I also had to queue up, drool over the display cases and narrow my choices to an agonizing list of 1. For the first visit anyway. I selected the Snickers Cake and almost didn’t blink at the outrageous $10 price tag for a mini cake. True, it was beautiful, they did box it up and give me one of the classiest carrier bags I’ve ever seen to transport it the short distance of 24 flights back up to my room. Reminder to self: it’s Vegas and Vegas is expensive.

Snickers Cake

The cake was freaking delicious. It was layers of chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, ganache, something crunchy, a thin layer of caramel and just bites of perfection. And I’m not even big on peanut stuff. If I had to pay $10 for a little cake, it was worth every bite and calorie I consumed at almost midnight. Goodbye, diet. See you after Vegas.

That first trip did set me up for some “long-range” planning. In my-speak, that means I planned ahead to what I wanted to try for my remaining brief time in Vegas. We had team dinners I had to work around so I couldn’t actually camp out at the patisserie during my entire stay. Not that I didn’t briefly toy with the idea. Plus I had to work the calories in somehow. Which turned out to be easier than I thought since the Aria conveniently offered a nice gym which I utilized the next morning by banging out 7 miles on the treadmill. It was triple digit temps outside so no way was I running outdoors in that desert heat.

But the 7-mile run emboldened me to choose the Nutella Beignet for my breakfast that morning. Here’s the funny thing about running. I can’t eat before I run; my stomach can’t handle it. And even though I burn a ton of calories during the run, I can’t eat right after a run either. I’m just not hungry. An hour later though, I’m ready to chew off my right leg. The Nutella beignet went down easy after that hour although I have to correct the name and call it a doughnut rather than a beignet. I’ve had beignets at no less an august venue than Café du Monde and this wasn’t a beignet. It was a doughnut. It was delicious but a doughnut nonetheless.

Nutella Beignet

I had aspirations to sample more delicious goodness from Jean Philippe Patisserie but alas, I hadn’t factored in how much heat really does suppress the appetite, even mine, and a day spent outside at the pool cabana where the team was pretty much killed my sweet tooth. So effectively that, despite my 7-mile run, I wasn’t even hungry for lunch and didn’t eat again until 4 pm that day.

At that point, our team dinner wasn’t for another couple of hours so I did indulge in another Jean Philippe purchase to tide me over. This time was an almond brioche. I’ve had brioche before too but this one they did a little differently. Instead of a whole brioche roll, this seemed more like a round brioche loaf that was cut into a slice, layered with almond paste and sliced almonds. Whatever they did to it, it was also freaking delicious. Soft bread, sweet almond paste, crunchy sliced almonds – amazing. It also had the benefit of being cheaper than the Snickers Cake. This one clocked in at $5.

Almond Brioche

There’s also a Jean Philippe Patisserie at the Bellagio which is where some of my coworkers and I did end up as part of the scavenger hunt after dinner that night. We were supposed to hunt for the “world’s largest chocolate fountain”. Took us awhile to find it, even with the help of google and our iphones, but mostly because the Bellagio is so Vegas-Strip huge that we had to cover a lot of ground to end up in that part of the Bellagio.

I don’t know what I was visualizing when I thought of the world’s large chocolate fountain but it wasn’t what I expected. Maybe I had been hoping more for a pure waterfall of chocolate a la Niagara Falls in gushing streams of liquid warm chocolate. Hey, I can dream. Instead, it was a bunch of small pools of various types of chocolate in an elaborate structure that connected to each other but the chocolate flowed quite sedately. Huh. Oh well, at least I can say I got to see it.

I had good intentions of making one final stop at Jean Philippe Patisserie on my last morning before leaving for the airport since it was literally on my way to checkout at the lobby. I wanted to try the Nutella Brioche. Or the sticky bun. Or a scrumptious-looking muffin. Even perhaps get something for breakfast there then a snack later at the airport. Alas, when the time came, I just wasn’t hungry. I know, who am I, right? But the triple digit heat was still doing a fine job of suppressing my appetite plus I’d had a big dinner the night before (next post). So I missed a third opportunity to indulge in Jean Philippe’s offerings. Bummer. Next time, Vegas, next time.

Restaurant Review: Cesario's

Cesario's - dinner on June 13, 2017

While I was in San Francisco for my conference, I didn’t just eat pastries from Mr. Holmes’ Bakehouse. I also had dinner with a coworker at Cesario’s one night. It’s always fun to check out new places when I’m away from home and it’s easy enough to google “best restaurants” near whatever hotel we were staying at. Cesario’s popped as #4 on Trip Advisor and it was easy to make a reservation through Open Table so that’s where we ended up.

Turns out it was a good thing I had made a reservation as, when we arrived, the tables were nearly all full, there was a party ahead of us looking to be seated and we were able to leapfrog them, both because of the reservation and that the only table available was a two-topper. The restaurant was at a corner and, typical of San Francisco, was fairly small in terms of seating. 

Service was pretty decent, considering how crowded they were, and our server took the time to answer questions and requests for recommendations. The bread in the bread basket wasn’t crusty, which is a little surprising considering it was an Italian restaurant. I suspect they outsource their bread and get it from a bakery (a common practice) rather than baking inhouse.

We were hungry so we ordered polenta “fries” as the appetizer. The “fries” came out as fried polenta cut into chunky rectangles and served with marinara sauce. While they didn’t bear any resemblance to actual fries, they were pretty tasty and hit the right spot. 

Polenta "fries"

Linguine Vongole

For my entrée, I ordered my ubiquitous spaghetti and meatballs, my go-to choice whenever I try a new Italian restaurant, much like pad thai is my go-to test for a new Thai place. In hindsight, I really should mix up my order since it isn’t that hard to make good spaghetti and meatballs and I probably didn’t give Cesario’s enough runway to impress me with their Italian dishes. My coworker, on the advice of our server, ordered the linguine vongole. And we split the tiramisu for dessert. The food was good and the service was nice. It’s the kind of restaurant that’s a safe choice in terms of the food but if you wanted a little more adventure in your dining choices, San Francisco offers many options. For myself, I enjoyed it but it’s hard to go wrong with pasta.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Tiramisu

Bakery Review: Mr. Holmes Bakehouse

Mr. Holmes' Bakehouse - visited June 13-14, 2017

Whenever I’m somewhere “new” or different from my usual route of home to gym to work to home, I always, always check out any nearby bakeries and restaurants. Case in point, I went to my company’s annual user conference in San Francisco for a few days in June and I whipped out my phone to see what top-rated bakeries were within walking distance of my hotel.

If you remember my perambulations from my New York City trip, you know “walking distance” to me has a wider range than most people. I’ve walked 5 miles for a cookie in case that gives you context. Fortunately, in this case, I found a bakery just under a mile away from where I was staying – totally doable distance on two legs. 

And it wasn’t just any bakery. In googling “top rated bakeries” near my hotel, I came across a link for an article that listed “100 Foods to Eat in San Francisco Before You Die”. My first instinct was to take that as a personal challenge and see how many I could knock off the list before I went home. Then sanity prevailed. I was there for work, after all, and only had a limited time to work on my foodie bucket list. I had to prioritize.

Serendipity had it though that one of those items was the cruffin from Mr. Holmes Bakeshop. I’ve had cruffins before. Following in the wake of Dominique Ansel’s famous cronuts (croissant + doughtnut), a cruffin is – you guessed it – a cross between a croissant and a muffin. In addition, I found another foodie article that lauded the chocolate chip cookie from Mr. Holmes’ Bakehouse, calling it “the best chocolate chip cookie in San Francisco.” Whoa. Talk about waving a red flag in front of a twitchy bull. I can’t pass up that kind of challenge, especially when it was just a mile away.

Want to know how nuts I am, how seriously I take this kind of thing? Perhaps only another foodie would understand. Mr. Holmes’ Bakehouse opens at 7 am. I had to catch the shuttle for my conference at 8:30 am. I needed walking time to the bakeshop, enough time to buy my products, meet my coworkers at their hotel and walk to another hotel to catch the shuttle. Not only that but I wanted to go for a run before I went to the bakery because, let’s face it, a mile walk there and a mile walk back wasn’t going to be enough of a calorie burn to work off what I had planned to buy. So I ended up getting up at 5:15 am, was down in the hotel gym by 5:30, ran 4 miles on the treadmill, did a cool down, showered back in my room, got ready for the conference then headed out to get to the bakeshop a little after 7 am.

My timing was pretty good, although I was ready to stick my face directly into the display case because I was starving by the time I got there. Unfortunately, cruffins weren’t going to be ready until 9 am but that was okay since I ended up getting 2 churro croissants, a pain au chocolat, an apple monkey bread and one of the famous chocolate chip cookies instead. What? I planned to share with my coworkers (and actually did, I’ll have you know).

The pain au chocolat didn’t even make it onto the shuttle bus. While I waited for my coworkers in the lobby of their hotel, I polished that sucker off first thing. I’ve made pain au chocolat before and while they’re not that hard to make once you have the dough, they’re still enough of a pain (haha) to make from scratch that I’d rather buy them than make them. The key to a good pain au chocolate isn’t just having flaky croissant dough but also using high quality chocolate sticks as the filling. The one from Mr. Holmes was super flaky, almost a little too much so since it made for some messy eating. I’m enough of a foodie that I didn’t care that much of the sight I made, hovering over the pastry box while trying to keep flakes of my pain au chocolat from decorating my front. Dignity has no place when enjoying a good pastry.

Pain au Chocolat

My assessment of the rest of the goodies that I consumed throughout the day and also shared with my coworkers:

Apple monkey bread – super delicious. I like monkey bread, I like apples. Together they made a nice combination. I wish I’d gotten 2 of these and only 1 of the churro croissants.

Top right corner: apple pie monkey bread

Churro Croissant

Churro croissants – nice, flaky croissant, outside was covered in cinnamon sugar to align with the churro billing. The inside was filled with some kind of cream filling. It was good but I have to admit there was too much of it for me. I’m not big on cream or custard-y desserts except for crème brulee and there was an awful lot of filling in the croissant.

Chocolate Chip Cookie - $3

Chocolate Chip Cookie – I don’t know if this is THE best in San Francisco (I’m willing to try others for research purposes) but it was a pretty good cookie. It was thick, it had a delicious caramelized brown sugar-butter flavor and it was chewy. I did end up sharing this with 3 other people as I couldn’t finish the whole thing by the time I got around to eating it. No surprise considering all the pastry I had consumed earlier that day.

Cruffins - $4.50 each

But wait, I ate more. I couldn’t be this close to the famous cruffin and not actually try one, right? Fortunately I had a later start the next day since we were going well into the evening for the conference so I was able to get to Mr. Holmes Bakehouse right at 9 am when the cruffins were being put out. There was a small line outside the shop as others were waiting for the doling out of the daily cruffin. I bought one (by that time, I was still swimming in buttery, flaky pastries from the day before so one was sufficient as a taste test) and ate it later that morning. 

I’m not quite sure how I feel about the cruffin in general. Honestly, it seemed more like a croissant but just forced into an unnatural muffin-like shape. It had all the prerequisites of being flaky and tasting like a croissant and not so much of the muffin qualities. This also had an inordinate (to me) amount of filling in it – something like an orange cream. I discovered later that they do different flavors of cruffins just like Dominique Ansel does a different flavor of cronuts every month. If I was more of a cream filling person, I’d probably have liked this better. Don’t get me wrong – it was good and very well-made. I’m glad I tried it. But I would probably stick to the pain au chocolat and apple monkey bread if I ever went back. Still, check on the foodie bucket list for having a cruffin from Mr. Holmes Bakehouse. 99 more things to eat in San Francisco to go.

Bakery Review: Hannah's Cafe

Hannah's Cafe - visited June 17, 2017

I’ve been remiss in not blogging about the various bakeries and restaurants I’ve tried out over the past couple of months. I’ve been traveling so I've expanded my reach and it’s a shame not to share my gastronomic indulgences. So I’m going to take the next week (or two) on my blog and catch up on those posts as I share my “foodie crawl” from my neighborhood to San Francisco to Las Vegas to Milan to back home. I ate everywhere.

We’ll start local. One of my coworkers mentioned liking bear claws and how they were hard to find nowadays as so many bakeries just didn’t make them anymore. I ended up taking that as a personal challenge to find one and perused yelp for “best bear claws” in our area. One reviewer mentioned Hannah’s Café so I decided to mosey down there on a Saturday morning to see if the bear claws were really all that. 

Only to arrive and find there were no bear claws in evidence in the display case. I asked the counter person and she looked baffled. As in “what’s a bear claw” baffled. Not a good sign. Someone else behind the counter tried to explain it was “like an almond croissant”. Um, no. Totally different. Croissants are made by layering dough and butter multiple times to achieve their flaky texture. Bear claws are traditionally made with enriched dough like a brioche and have a less flaky texture but still a tender crumb, similar to a brioche or challah. Yes, they’re both stuffed with some kind of almond paste and garnished with almonds but the doughs are different.

Finally, someone who appeared to be the pastry chef for the café said she didn’t have any bear claws. Well, darn. Not that I’m such a big bear claw fan myself but I’d come with a purpose and that purpose was thwarted. Which, of course, only made me want a bear claw for myself. Still, I was flexible. And since I was already there, might as well try something they did have, right?

The café wasn’t very big and there were only a couple of display cases but they still showed a nice assortment of baked goods. I waffled between a pastry-pastry (like a pain au chocolat, my fave) and more of a cakey dessert like an actual cake or cupcake. I finally settled on two mini cakes: a German chocolate and a salted caramel chocolate.

When trying a new bakery, I rarely ask how much anything is, figuring that even if I pay a little more, at least I’m supporting a local small business, right? But I have to admit I blinked when the cashier rang up the two petite cakes and the total was $14. $7 a (little) cake! Eeep. For something the size of a Sprinkles cupcake. But….supporting a local small business means supporting a local small business so I dug for my cash and handed it over. (As an aside, I prefer to pay in cash when shopping at a small business so the small business owner saves on credit card fees.)

German Chocolate Petite Cake

The cakes were nicely presented, wrapped with clear plastic so the outer edges don’t get dry while sitting in a refrigerated display case all day. I thought both cakes were good. In hindsight, I should’ve gotten a different flavor for one of the cakes other than a chocolate-based one since essentially they came from the same cake but were just finished differently, one with the coconut and the other with the salted caramel.

Salted Caramel Chocolate Petite Cake

They must’ve been recently made as they weren’t dry and the flavors were good. I did think it was the kind of cake I could make myself though so I’m not sure I’d pay $7 for one again. I’d still want to support the business so if I go again, I might try something on the pastry side like a croissant or pain au chocolat since I can’t easily make either of those. Too bad about the bear claws though.

Vanilla Cake Filled with Cookie Butter

Bakery Quality White Cake - made July 4, 2017, adapted from All in All

This is another recipe I made for the 4th of July barbecue because I could frost and decorate the cake with my handy bag of red, white and blue M&Ms. M&Ms show up better against a vanilla frosting than a chocolate one plus my nephew, Vanilla King (he's made it to being able to "sort of" tolerate chocolate but still prefers vanilla) was attending the barbecue so I defaulted to vanilla cake as one of the desserts I'd brought.

Most vanilla cakes use almond extract to add to the flavor. Not me. I love almonds and despise almond extract. I always just add extra vanilla extract or, in this case, vanilla bean paste. I knew using cake flour would give this cake a nice tender crumb and it did. Just don't overbake it - does that even need to be said anymore?

I didn't want just a plain vanilla cake with vanilla frosting though (sorry, Vanilla King) so instead of sandwiching the layers with the vanilla buttercream, I ended up filling it with cookie butter. It was almost by accident as after I had made the frosting while the cake was cooling, I wasn't sure I'd have enough frosting to fill and cover both layers. So I spread a layer of cookie butter over the bottom cake before topping it with the second layer. It worked out pretty well and I left myself enough frosting for the rest of the cake.

But in hindsight I should've followed what professional cake bakers do and piped frosting around the outer edge of the bottom cake layer before filling it. Why? Because that's what would hold the layers in place and aligned while you cover the whole thing with frosting. Because I didn't, the layers moved around on me as I frosted it. So it was slightly lopsided. Ever try straightening a cake you'd already frosted? Yeah, it doesn't work.

Regardless, this cake tasted pretty good. The crumb was tender, the cookie butter added a nice flavor to complement the vanilla cake and, miracles, I even liked the vanilla buttercream. So did the rest of the barbecue crowd.

Oh, and you'll also notice, I did my usual trick of reserving enough batter for a small taste test cake. When I'm bringing a whole cake to a party, I can't very well present it with a slice missing or an explanation of "I had to taste it first." Instead, I reserve a small portion of batter to bake separately into a ramekin which I topped with a layer of cookie butter then covered with some of the frosting. Yup, I verified it was good enough to bring to the party and share with the others.

2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 cup milk
6 egg whites, about 3/4 cup
1 teaspoon almond extract (I substituted vanilla bean paste)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 9" round cake pans.
2. In a medium bowl, mix milk and egg whites with vanilla and almond extracts until blended.
3. In a large mixing bowl, combine cake flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add cubes of butter and cut in with a pastry blender or two knives until butter pieces are the size of small peas.
4. Add the milk mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined.
5. Divide the batter evenly between the two cake pans. Bake for 25-27 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted near the center of the cakes.
6. Cool the cakes in the pans for 5 minutes then run a small spatula along the sides to loosen cake, turn out onto plates and let cool completely before frosting.

Frosting
3 cups powdered sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
2-4 tablespoons heavy whipping cream or whole milk

1. Cream butter and powdered sugar together with paddle attachment of stand mixer until well blended then beat on high for 3 minutes. 
2. Add the vanilla and 2 tablespoons of the cream or milk and beat for another minute, adding more cream or powdered sugar to reach desired consistency.