Boulangerie Epi'Fanny

Even though I love full-service hotels located in Downtown, it does mean they cost more money and generally, breakfast is not included.  Hence, you either have to spend a lot of money to eat mediocre meals at the hotel restaurant (no thanks) or head out each morning in search for food.  Well, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing in this case as we were only about a block away from Boulangerie Epi'Fanny located on Rue St. Jean.  This gave us an opportunity to sample enough of their wares and to also grab a coffee.

On our first go-around, we had a bunch of items including the Cranberry Daniose.  Even though this looked like a tart, it was not due to its shell being comprised of puff pastry.  This was more akin to a danish and similarly to their Carre aux Fruits in the display case.  Whatever the case, it was light and crisp on the outside while the custard was smooth and just sweet enough.

So one cannot visit a French bakery without sampling their Croissants right?  Well first off, these were not very expensive unlike many $5.00+ croissants these days.  I thought this was a decent version with a crispy exterior and some shattering.  The layers could've been more defined but it did taste buttery.  Not the best croissant I've ever had, but a very good one and as mentioned, reasonably-priced. 

One of their signature items is the Chausson aux Pomme.  Loved the design on the outside and in reality, this was as good as people made it out to be.  Beyond the flaky and buttery exterior, the apple filling was purposefully sweet with a balancing amount of tartness.  We could taste the butteriness of the pastry and there were discernible layers.  As expected, the layer that was in contact with the filling was softer.

As mentioned earlier, they also had a selection of Carré aux Fruits and we chose the mixed berries.  This was a rather large pastry that was impressively not soggy on the bottom.  Even with all of the wet ingredients, the pastry stayed intact and did not sag.  The outside was crunchy and shattered all-over-the-place (which is a good thing).  In the middle, the fruit was tangy and sweet.

Unlike the snails we associate with French cuisine, the Escargot was not that.  Rather it refers to its appearance with the swirled pastry emulating a snail's shell.  This was also similar to the other pastries where it shattered and was flaky.  Inside was soft and buttery while only being slightly sweet.  There were other options for this with various fruits strewn throughout.  We chose the basic one instead.

Lastly, we got the New York Roll with raspberry filling.  This is the latest craze right now with scroll croissants in various forms and flavours.  I found this one very good with a crunchy exterior that shattered everywhere once I bit into it.  There was a considerable amount of sweet raspberry jam inside that helped flavour the entire croissant.  Overall, we found the pastries at Epi'Fanny to be solid and well-priced.  I also had a Croque Monsieur too and it was good, albeit cold (best to get it heated up).  Our coffee was decent too.  That is why we went every morning while we were in Quebec City.

The Good:

- Solid stuff

- Well-priced

- Nice people

The Bad:

- I've had better but not at this price