Brioche

Brioche
401 W Cordova Street
Vancouver, BC

When something bad happens, it is possible it is “bad” on the spot; instead, it is sometimes a matter of what you make out of it. Last week, Mijune (of Follow Me Foodie) invited me and Anita (of La Petite Foodie) to watch Did You Hear About the Morgans? (It was an OK movie for some kicks). As a token of appreciation, I thought I should bring some goodies before we head up to the theatre. So, I tasked myself to go to Finch’s, since I recently wrote about it and Mijune wanted to give it a try. Alas, despite all the good planning (start work early so I can be there at around 4:30 p.m., as Finch’s closes at 5:00 p.m.), it failed. The reason? They ran out of baguettes and the kitchen was closed. When the cashier noticed my disappointment, she suggested Brioche, a couple of blocks down. Not wanting to disappoint anybody, I went for this Plan B…

Fortunately, Brioche was still open but I couldn’t dally as I still had to meet Mijune and Anita. Quickly looking at their menu, I made my order, which included odd details like requesting the sandwich to be cut in three and, to borrow a trick from Sherman (of Sherman’s Food Adventures), asked if I could snap some pictures of the sandwiches before they were “wrapped”. Needless to say, I was met with some funny reactions. Ah, the things we do for a good post! Anyway, after that, I checked some of the other goodies they have available. I am sure Anita and Mijune will come back one of these days for these, hehehehehe.

After some minutes which seem to have taken forever, I was presented the first sandwich.

A chorizo premium panino which has also avocado and bocconcini. The chorizo was quite good – first it is not the usual sausage like chorizo, instead it was a cured chorizo, which gave it a “bite”. Also, it was a bit spicy which gave another layer of taste to the pork goodness. However, the other components, i.e., avocado and bocconcini, didn’t add much because of the amount it had. You could see it was there but I did not taste it that much. The bread was decent, keeping in mind it was in the container from Brioche to the theatre, though I thought it was a bit too thick.

Ham, brie and mushroom. Unlike the chorizo, this is not a “premium” panino, though I am still not sure what makes this not “premium”. Could it be the type of bread? The combination of ingredients worked well; though, a similar issue as with the chorizo panino happened here as well: the amount of mushroom was a bit small, hence you couldn’t tell if it was there. The brie provided a creaminess that melded all of the other components together, so absolutely no complains about this part. However, the ham disappointed me. Now, don’t get me wrong, it had its interesting points, as the black forest ham provided some saltiness to the sandwich, just that… C’mon, deli-like thin slices of ham out of all possible hams? OK, probably not honey ham as the sweetness would have been odd.

Prosciutto, tomato and bocconcini. A simple sandwich, if you ask me, combining the saltiness of the prosciutto, some creaminess of the bocconcini and the tomato… Well, it didn’t add much as it wasn’t either sweet or acidic. However, I thought more could have been done to the sandwich. How about some basil?

While we were eating, we were discussing the types of bread used. I personally didn’t mind either one of them as it was good bread, though I favoured the baguette style bread a bit more. The oddity was that none of the three sandwiches had the infamous grill marks on it, which made us wonder if they were pressed. Of course, that is a minor issue, as not all panini are supposed to be pressed.

After eating them, we were wondering the merits of each panino and, in my opinion, I thought the chorizo was first, followed by the prosciutto and then the ham. As for Anita and Mijune… Well, you will have to check their blog posts! (Mijune’s post is here; Anita’s post is here) Regardless, I think it was a good sandwich. The question is, which one do I prefer, Finch’s or Brioche? I think I prefer Finch’s a bit more mainly because of the pear/brie/walnut/prosciutto combination that I did not find in Brioche. But, even then, it does not prevent me from enjoying it.

Tagged under: Downtown • Sandwich • Vancouver