Boulangerie Pierre et Patisserie and 85 Degree Bakeries: Heavenly Bread Made with Stuff Beyond Your Imagination

Isn't this a beauty? Not sure I'll be flamed for this but I, for one, am sad and angry that California decided to ban foie gras.

So I chose a pate and ham banh mi at Boulangerie Pierre et Patisserie in Little Saigon/Garden Grove area. I entered this place on pure whim as the one I had in mind had closed down. Crowded strip mall. Check. Tons of people waiting in line to order. Check. Enticing aromas of butter that enables all that flaky goodness in the croissants. Check. The pate and ham banh mi was good but the baguette could have been better. I liked the one at Banh Mi Cho Cu better.

Still, it was a solid sandwich with all the fixings such as fresh jalapenos, onions, strips of carrots and radishes and fresh cilantro.

I also tried the plain croissant, chocolate croissant and apple turnover, as well as a coffee eclair. I'm super picky with my eclairs and unfortunately, this one was too sweet for me.

Still, the croissants were good and I'd definitely return for them.

Another place I'd be returning to more frequently were it not so far away from me is 85 Degree Bakery in Irvine. It's tucked into a massive mall that has all types of Asian restaurants and a Korean market.

A Taipei import, it was a veritable candy store for me. Start with a big tray and inspect your vast selection. Taro roll? Add. Black squid ink roll with cheddar cheese? Add. Green onion roll with cheese? Add. I continued to do this until my tray had moca coffee roll, red bean bread, cream cheese filled bread, custard pie like the ones sold in dim sum joints and many more.

This delicious and flaky custard pie, by the way, carries a lot of history. It's called pasteis de nata and is originally Portuguese. It made its way to China through Macau that was under Portuguese rule.

85 Degree's rendition of it was very good, far better than many dim sum joints.

I also had bread similar to Korea's gombopang that has little bumps of sugar crust on top of the bread with no filling.

The green onion roll was like a meal but on the greasy side.

The chocolate croissant was good but not as good as Pierre's version. I know this is being nit picky but it's also about abiding by traditions. So a chocolate croissant, aka pain au chocolat, should like this, not like the one you see to your right. That's what plain or almond croissants look like.

How was the squid ink cheddar cheese roll, you ask? Honestly, I couldn't taste the squid but it was cool eating a jet black roll with hints of cheddar.

My favorite was the custard pie. My favorite bread was the almond and walnut roll that's shimmering in the left photo.

The best thing about the experience was its entirely reasonable price tag.

All this cornucopia cost me less than $15 total.

I really wish it opened one up in West LA. How about one on Sawtelle? Or at the very least, Torrance?

Loved my OC adventure. Thanks for reading!

Banh Mi Cho Cu: Finally Found a Good One

I admit I'm no connoisseur of Little Saigon. It's far and I don't speak or read Vietnamese so my knowledge is limited by the rants and raves of message boards and personal referrals. But when I had a meeting down there recently, I duly put in my diligence to work so we could make a pit stop to treat ourselves. I am severely deprived of good banh mi up in LA and South Bay, so it was such a pleasant surprise when the one I chose from a list of like 10 turned out to be quite good.

Banh Mi Cho Cu is in a mini-mall in Westminster that I wouldn't have noticed if not for my scribbled address and directions from the previous evening's research. I purposely chose one that was less commercial, more mom-and-pop, hole in the wall, you get the idea.

And I wasn't disappointed. We got a total of 15 sandwiches with some BBQ pork, chicken and vegetarian ones. The display of pastries was so irresistible that I got myself a pate chaud, which was like baked puff pastry with some ground pork. It hardly tasted like pate that I'm familiar with and I also wasn't able to heat it up, (chaud is hot in French) so maybe flavor was lost there too. I wouldn't get it again. But that BBQ pork was delicious. It was perfectly seasoned and charred. The works were fresh, spicy, crunchy all at once.

I love it when I find a new place that's this good and such good value to boot. If you get the mid-sized bread, which is big enough for one, you can get one free for every two you get. So the final bill was ridiculous to say the least.

Just as we were leaving, a woman behind the counter brought out these fresh-out-of -the-fryer dessert rolls with bananas in them. She talked us into getting four, at a discount, of course. These were the highlight for me. I had these before I even bit into my sandwich because they were piping hot and I knew temperature could make or break this dessert, especially since it was deep fried.

Crunchy, then soft, then sweet and creamy -- in short, everything you want in a dessert. And I don't even have a sweet tooth! It was a great dessert-cum-appetizer to my main meal of banh mi. Must try the chicken one next time. My only beef with the baguettes, which were fresh and good (although not like Bouchon good), was that they smelled too much like butter. I wouldn't normally consider that a liability but I do when the bread smells not like quality butter but cheaper butter. Like I wouldn't go there to pick my weekly dose of baguettes, but I would go to get my banh mi and deep-fried banana rolls fix any day.