St. Honore Bakery and other oddities

Odd. I'm in Chinatown, and standing in front of a bakery with a European name. I walk in and find no Parisian aesthetics, no croissants, and no jacked-prices. The fanciful individual cakes in the glass cases are much more akin to Swiss pastry than anything I can think of, and the price tags ($1 or less), are typical of street venders' fare. This is Sino-French food run amuck.

The majority of goods available at this and similar Chinatown Bakeries -- another favorite being K.C.'s Pastry Shop -- was even more alien to me than the low-pricing. Under the glass cases you'll find oversized breaded and fried buns, rectangles and disks of puff pastry (gok), and other oddities. The fillings range from sesame paste to red bean (azuki) paste to BBQ pork -- ingredients customarily associated with dinner plates.

But, at 60 cents a pop, purchasing a couple of these foreign "sweets" is low-risk. Pictured in my hand is the black bean bun, which is a dense disk filled with a heavy, sweet black bean. The "bun"  itself is a flaky puff pastry with many sandwiched layers, not unlike a turnover. I didn't find this one to be much of a treat because of the near chalky texture. The red bean bun provides more flavor and less school-supply aesthetics.

The pork-filled pastry rectangles and buns are also hit-and-miss. The buns (boa or bow) are palm-sized, airy, and buttery; with the spare filling, the dough cloys and diminishes the decent pork flavor. The rectangle turnover style pastry had less dough, but the BBQ pork inside looked like dog chow, the taste wasn't much better I'd suspect.

I found consolation in a "sesame ball (doy)," as it was called at several bakeries.The thick exterior portion is glutinous rice ball, which can be fried or simply steamed. Most sesame balls are fried and then covered with sesame seeds. The inner pocket is a mixture of sesame seeds and sugar ground nearly to a paste (like a chunky sesame butter). The ball is gummy but not displeasingly so, making it a unique gastronomic treat.

The Pastries Aren't All Sweet, But the Drinks Are

Most bakeries also tend to carry an array of everyone's favorite tapioca drink, Bubble Tea. I usually pass on the cold tea concoction, not for its lack of taste, but because of the gimmicky tapioca pearls (sago) piled at the drink's bottom. Besides from taking away from the amount of
liquid you receive, the little pearls are awkward tasteless balls of jelly (and I should mention the little balls pack a caloric punch). They're fun in small amounts, but the drink often contains a dozen pearls or more into the cup. On the bright side, they're cheaper than any Starbucks drink - usually $2.50 or less (maybe $3 for a large smoothie) - and come in rare flavors like green tea (matcha).

Instead of Pearl Tea I tend to go for an iced coffee Hong Kong style, or, when available, Vietnamese style. The former is basically a typical American iced coffee kicked up a notch with a little cream and lots of sugar to obviate any bitterness. The hot coffee is usually cooled so the ice doesn't melt from the heat and ruin the drink. The bakeries always manage to make the drink tastier than my feeble sweetening attempts do.

Vietnamese Iced Coffee is made when a French-pressed dark roast coffee is dripped or poured over a layer of sweetened condensed milk. Ice is then added before the drink is stirred to combine the layers. The ice melts, but because the French roast is so strong it does little to dilute the drink. (There are other ways to make this iced drink, but all of them involve said ingredients.) Vietnamese Coffee is available at Vietnam Restaurant and sometimes at Banh Mi sellers, like Cafe Y Nhu or Ba Le Bakery.

Locations:
St. Honore Bakery - 935 Race St, Philadelphia, 19107
K.C.'s Pastries - a) 109 N 10th St, Philadelphia, 19107 b) 145 N. 11th St.

Links:
- One of few sites to offer a personal guide to culinary crossovers from the East. The site sometimes includes authentic menu names and translations...and crappy pictures: Gaijin Girl's Guide to Chinatown.
- For more about Bubble Tea check out Interesting Thing of the Day (Did you know that the tapioca pearls usually aren't even made from true tapioca?)

Comments

[Be happy today]

Some genuinely excellent content on this web site,appreciate it for contribution.

[preesi]

Ummm, why buy a Bubble Tea, if you dont want the bubbles?
Duh!