Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts – Bakery 101

Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts – Bakery 101
1505 West 2nd Avenue
Vancouver, BC

OK, despite its odd name, no, I wasn’t in a class. Rather, this is a bakery located in the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts, a local culinary school near Granville Island. So, how come I went considering I am not crazy about sweets, not to mention this one in particular, considering all the bakeries found in Vancouver? Well… Blame Yen of OMNOMics on this one, as she recently wrote a blog post about it!

OK, the truth was that, after my lunch in Go Fish, I went back to Atlantic Canada House to see if lines had shortened up. No, no chance so I felt defeated and started going back to take the streetcar (aka Olympic Line) to go back to Downtown. On my way out, I noticed the school and Yen’s post so I thought “I might as well!”.

As soon as you walk pass the door, you can see the bakery. Of course, if you want lunch or dinner prepared by the students, you can go to the restaurant as well. However, I will leave that for some other visit, hehehehe. Since I had a big lunch in Go Fish, that meant I only had space for that much. The question was… What? As in which one of these????

This is for show purposes only – I wasn’t going to order the whole pie!

Now, the fact they were doing some prep, float count and so one, meant they were in a bit of a rush. So, while I was deciding, three different people checked on me. Yes, I felt some pressure in ordering but, c’mon, give me a break, OK? Anyway, since I couldn’t decide, I went for the same item that Yen went for. Behold…

The Pazuwa. Now, don’t ask me what Pazuwa means or into what that translates into. Instead, I can only say it has milk chocolate & hazelnut mousse with cheesecake & chocolate chunks, chocolate sponge cake base with chocolate glaze”. Yes, that is chocolate on chocolate on chocolate!

At first, because it looked shinny, I was under the impression the exterior would be solid… Nope, it was really soft. Wooops, my mistake! Similar to what happened to Yen, I was under the impression it would be a solid piece of cheese cake… My mistake again! Instead, it was small pieces of cheese cake. And I will admit, the combination of the soft mousse and almost as soft cheesecake worked really well. Not only in the texture sense but also in the taste. Whereas one is basic and the other is, well, chocolate, they did not fight each other, instead, the cheesecake added some additional creaminess to the overall concoction. As for the cake, in part it was MIA but the rest of the chocolate made up for that “absence”. In fact, despite it is labelled as milk chocolate, there was enough dark(er) chocolate to give it a slightly bitter taste to it.

Now, I won’t try to even compare it to giants like Ganache Patisserie, Kreations Artisan Cake or Thomas Haas – these guys are pros. However, if this is what students can crank out, I am certain they will be able to provide even better things in the future. In the meantime, if you want pastries from places like the ones mentioned above but do not want to blow the budget, this place offers an interesting alternative.

Tagged under: Dessert • Pastry • Vancouver