Newly Open Portland Patisserie Champagne Poetry Fills Its Pastry Case With Color | Eater Portland

"In the basement of the newly opened patisserie on Southeast Hawthorne, I watched a baker lean into a brown cardboard box and airbrush a white chocolate mousse with cocoa butter until it took on a buttercup-yellow, velvetlike finish, while another baker added droplets of clear fruit glaze "like rain drops on a flower," in the words of owner Dan Bian. Bian, formerly of La Rose Patisserie, trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Portland and with patisserie chefs Cedric Grolet and Johan Martin, and she spent years shaping the cafe—covering its southern wall with fake roses, choosing marble tables and blush-and-fuchsia velvet chairs, and picking rosé bubbles to match the decor. The pastry case is filled with matcha cheesecake slices, pastel-hued mousses and cakes, and tie-dye macarons in flavors like lavender-rose; an entire shelf is devoted to macarons from Sicilian pistachio to raspberry-rose. Standouts include the passion heaven, a bubble-shaped, air-brushed white chocolate–vanilla mousse topped with glaze raindrops and filled with a guava-grapefruit gelée; shiny strawberry-yuzu cakes; a pink-and-purple swirl filled with pineapple and coconut; and a doughnut-shaped chocolate mousse cake topped with rainbow sprinkles—many cakes feature fruity cores that add a burst of acid inside a sweet shell. Breakfast offerings include buns and croissants: the Cloud Nine bun, a salty-sweet Japanese cream cheese bun that almost resembles an iceberg; croissants coated with almonds or stuffed with chocolate; and a raspberry-rose croissant (a raspberry-filled butter croissant topped with a hefty dollop of pink-hued toasted Italian meringue). Espresso and cold brew come from a micro-roaster out of Beaverton. The whole cafe is drenched in pink—the flower-covered wall with neon wings for selfies, bubblegum paint on the corners—and Champagne Poetry opened in early April, selling out both days over the weekend." - Brooke Jackson-Glidden