Delicacy Passion Patisserie

CHINA 🇨🇳

COVID-19 UPDATE: The only visible pandemic impacts on this mostly-takeout spot have been masked staff and the banishment of the lone indoor table. On warm days, there may be two chairs set up on the sidewalk.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Written by Joseph Gessert, photographed by Liv Dillon.

 

Brooklyn’s second Chinatown, extending from Bensonhurst to Gravesend, is home to over a dozen Chinese bakeries, most of which offer the familiar (and pleasant) mixture of bubble tea, baked goods, and limited dim sum items made to order or pulled from a steam case.

 

On the eastern end of 86th Street, past the growing cluster of Vietnamese restaurants, the curiously-monikered Delicacy Passion Patisserie has been doing something quite different for the past two years. While this strip was largely shuttered in April and May, Delicacy Passion stayed open straight through the spring, and business is finally picking up at this unique Chinatown bakery that offers no savories, limited teas, and a small but ambitious selection of French-influenced Asian American desserts.

 

On assessing their display case you would be tempted to sample from the middle row cakes that feature combinations of Asian ingredients: jackfruit and coconut, red bean and matcha, durian cheesecake to name a few. These are all completely serviceable, and surprisingly subdued, but you will actually be better off picking from the top row, where the chef’s more outlandish creations are on display, and the most love has been put into both aesthetics and flavor.

 

The Big Apple ($6, below, right) is a shiny pastry apple, wicked witch-worthy, that opens up into a re-imagined apple pie a la mode—a white chocolate shell with mousse and apple filling seated on a graham cracker cookie. On a modest block of an unpretentious neighborhood it is a surprising accomplishment, this piece of fine dining stagecraft that tastes every bit as good as it presents.

 

 

The chocoburger ($6, above, left), its frequent counterpart on the top row, features a chocolate-shelled chocolate mousse burger sandwiched between jumbo sesame macaron buns. Crack it open and raspberry filling gushes out, marking the burger rare. Other recurrent top row items include a mocha cream puff bear, flowered cupcakes, and a selection of macarons that includes lychee and sometimes sriracha. Presumably there is a Vietnamese influence at work here somewhere.

 

It should be noted that as adorable as these items are, they will fall apart as soon as you stick a fork in them—appreciate your apple or bear or burger, take a picture if you are so inclined, but then resign yourself to the whole thing going to pieces as you dig in and enjoy.

 

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GRAVESEND Brooklyn

2379 86th Street