Patisserie Fleur — Restaurant in Markham

!!! NEVER ORDER CAKES FROM HERE (Look at the attached photos) !!! $78 (pre-tax) for terrible quality !!! I ordered a cake for my friend’s bridal shower (Saturday) and went to pick it up the evening prior - what I ordered and what I received are drastically different. This cake shop LITERALLY has a photo for reference and this is what I ended up with: 1) The shade of the flowers and leaves are not even the same - what is on their website is light, pastel, and floral while what I received was tacky neon orange, bright pink, and bright green. This level of quality is what I expect from very old supermarkets… 2) Just look at the piping of the leaves! It is not even the same shape! The pink ones are also very different - you can see where they stopped the piping bag and it looks like the work of a beginner who is learning how to use a piping bag. See how the orange “roses” are poorly made - the baker didn’t even care to clean off the edges and just treated it like side-layered icing. Speaking of cleaning edges, they didn’t even care to clean the green icing off of the edges that shouldn’t have green! 3) Why is the surface of icing uneven on the top and the sides?! Why does the decorative component take up half of the cake instead of one-third (like the photo)? On a Friday evening with no other cake shops that can accept an order for the following morning, I am forced to take this cake. It is utterly embarrassing that I have to bring this to a function - even more so when it is surrounded by family and friends of my good friend. I am willing to pay for a good cake because I know how competitive it is out there; and surely, there are so many other cake shops that can do a better job and we chose them because of what we saw on their website! This place is a scam!!! I did not even want to pick this up or pay for this, but then I will be left without a cake for my friend’s special day, so I am forced to accept - the baker and the manager were not available to speak to. Even if you gave me this ugly cake for free, it will not make up for the fact that I have to present this joke. Even if it was free, I will 100% pick another cake shop that will be able to do what they show. Would it be possible that they’re using an image of a cake that is not even theirs? Possibly, and that would be false advertising. Now, if you ask why didn’t I go check how it looks in-person before I ordered? All their cake styles are not always readily available for you to view. Don’t order from here or else you’ll be like me: stuck with this cheap-looking and gaudy cake right before an...

Very respectfully, I was not impressed with my experience of their afternoon tea today. The three star rating is given with respect to the other offerings, which are btw, much worth both the quality and time taken to make them. The afternoon tea alone, though, which is $50/person and will probably intrigue some as an alternative to high tea at some fancier hotels and venues, deserves a one star rating. Here’s what you may want to know:

Perhaps the most blatant observation is that the actual product value of the food items you get are not at all near what you pay. Granted that there will be those who find value in the experience or social media photo, for the average person (or couple), you may be left feeling a little jipped. Their ensemble of daintily bite sized, over toasted croissant sandwiches, kind-of-stale cream puffs , and mousse cups that have ice crystals and fridge taste due to being refrigerated for too long… well, adds to the conversation at the table for sure. The obvious issue here is that they try to use items they don’t actually make, do not even serve as part of their menu, and thus, have to store until someone opts for their afternoon tea. Their sandwiches cannot possibly compare to that of high tea at hotels, where they can be made by chefs, fresh, and should not be marketed as a comparable. This review isn’t meant to sabotage the store, because like I mentioned, everything else (especially the employees) is great. But in a time of rising prices everywhere and lower disposable income, we should look out for each other. Anything served in refrigerated plastic containers and single use cups, should not average $6+ per item. This is a product offering that likely nets high profit margins for the owner and overestimates the “value of an experience”.

And so, if you’ve made it this far - if you’re looking for pastries, you can try just about every single one of their single-portion cakes for the price of two afternoon tea sets. I would’ve done this because their normal pastries are MUCH higher quality than anything you could get in afternoon tea. If you’re looking for afternoon tea, opt instead for the ones I’ve mentioned in...

Ordered the afternoon tea set and 2 mini cakes (Passionate Coconut and Sesame Noir) for pickup recently. We arrived on time but had to wait about 5 minutes as there was only one visible staff member working and she was busy making a drink for a dine-in customer. We were not acknowledged until she had finished with the previous customer which I understand, but also think she could've said something like: "Welcome, I'll be with you in a moment."

The Passionate Coconut was OK, though the passionfruit/mango centre was sort of just layered a bit on the top. I enjoyed the Sesame Noir as it wasn't very sweet and the sesame flavour was nice.

The afternoon tea set cost $30. One of the desserts (mini strawberry yogurt mousse cake) had been obviously frozen due to the visible condensation on its surface. It was also a very light pastel pink and not the deep red that's pictured on their website. The other items looked like what was pictured, but everything was very small. The cheese on the croissant also looked older, sort of like it had been reheated. The popcorn chicken was several small, circular balls. The sweet and savoury foods were packaged into two containers, each probably about 5x5 inches. The fruit tea that came with it was good, but instead of the plastic bottle with the cap that's pictured on their website, they had a metal lid (like soda cans) that had been secured onto their plastic bottle. If you wanted to eat the fruit inside, you'd have to cut open the metal lid.

My order totalled about $52. $30 for the afternoon tea set seemed like a good deal, but the actual portions were very small and did not justify the cost. If I visited again, I think I would just buy 1 or 2 mini cakes and a stand...