Give Yourself a Treat With a Parisian Sweet

The French themed bakery, Paris Baguette.
– Photo by Jason Yassine

By Jason Yassine

With an atmosphere of a French bakery, settled outside of the Santa Anita Mall is Paris Baguette (Westfield Santa Anita, 400 S. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia). This Paris themed shop is filled with an assortment of different pastries, cakes, breads and much more. In order to properly review this bakery, three tasty treats were purchased from three different categories of sweets.

The first tasty treat that I picked up was the Raspberry Cream Cheese Pastry. The scent of this desert was very fragrant, as you could smell the fruity aroma from the raspberry filling. The texture of the dough was crisp on the outside and was topped with toasted almond slices. Inside was a raspberry jam filling along side a creamy sweetened cheese filling. When biting into the pastry, all of the flavors came together and it made for a delicious dessert. The cheese filling was creamy and smooth which complimented the butter-like taste of the dough. I would prefer the raspberry filling to have more of an organic taste rather than it being a sweetened jam, but overall, it mixed well with the cheese filling.

The next dessert was a very classic French pastry, the Chocolate Croissant. Visually, the croissant looked very appealing. The texture on this pastry was buttery and flakey. When slicing into the croissant I noticed that the dough was very fluffy on the inside, which added to the appeal. The chocolate portion of the croissant appeared in little chunks throughout the inside of the dough. This pastry had a lot of potential, but I felt that the chunks of chocolate didn’t adequately compliment it. The chocolate should have been a warm rich spread rather than it being in chunks.

All of the desserts on display. –Photo by Jason Yassine

The final treat that I picked up was a slice of the Strawberry Fresh Cream Cake. Topped with fresh berries and a grape, it visually added color and freshness to the dessert. The cake texture was spongy and the silky smooth cream filled the layers in between the slice. When tasting the cake, the ingredients from the cream, fruit, and spongy texture came together very well making it light and delicious.

Overall, Paris Baguette is a decent bakery that provides a variety of desserts if you’re looking to satisfy your sweet tooth. Although I would like to see improvements from some of the pastries, I was satisfied with the overall experience. I would rate this bakery a solid three out of five stars.

Have you been to Paris Baguette before? If so, what was your favorite dessert there? Sound off in the comments below.