Earlier this year the New York Times claimed that, “Canadians have been keeping the best dessert for themselves,” in an article on butter tarts, which necessitated a follow-up article after the original attracted hundreds of comments. Tokyo, a city that has turned trend-seeking into an art, is home to Poko Bagel Café, which specializes in Montreal-style bagels made in a wood-burning oven. The BeaverTails chain has expanded to Japan, plus South Korea, the UAE, France, and this year it opened in Mexico.
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CANADIAN
Updated classics and social media-worthy creations to inspire your bakery menu By Mike Kostyo
Canadian consumers are no strangers to breads and baked goods – a donut chain is one of the country’s most famous exports, after all. Now the rest of the world is just beginning to catch on to the joys of Canadian favorites.
38 Spring 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News
BAKING MASH-UPS
While other countries play catch-up, Canadian operators are taking their breads and baked goods to the next level. They’re using on-trend flavors, dreaming up eye-catching creations, and mashing up classic dishes to transform them into something new. At Against the Grain Urban Tavern, a casual spot from Fab Restaurant Concepts in Toronto’s Corus Quay, the name informs the menu – they aren’t afraid to go against the grain when it comes to their breads, baked goods, and pastries. The Smashed Brekkie is an updated version of on-trend avocado toast made with ancient grains toast and topped with pomegranate seeds and caramelized lemon. Their own version of the butter tart is transformed into a Butter Tart Donut, filled with a brown sugar and raisin filling and topped with dried cherries, sea salt, brown butter cream, and candied pecans. They’ve even taken inspiration from pastries to create unique savory dishes like the Mac n’ Cheese Donuts drizzled with sriracha aioli and smoky ketchup. REVIVAL OF CLASSICS
Against the Grain isn’t the only one reinventing classic Canadian pastries and flavors. Last year Tim Hortons celebrated Canada’s 150th birthday by transforming a Nanaimo bar into the Nanaimo Bar Donut, which joined Dutchie Donuts and Maple Timbits on the menu. Maple also showed up in some baked goods at McDonald’s, which celebrated maple season with a Maple Apple Danish and Maple Mini Pastry. Maple, of course, is a quintessentially Canadian flavour, yet it continues to grow on menus, up 28 per cent on Canadian menus in the past four years, according to Datassential’s MenuTrends tool, which tracks menus from over 500 Canadian restaurants. Expect even more maple and maple-flavoured products to become available in the next few years due to the flavour’s recent media attention as the industry seeks the “next pumpkin spice.” While sweet, indulgent flavours like “s’mores” and Nutella are consumer favourites, sophisticated, sometimes even savoury flavours are showing up in cakes, pies, cookies, brownies, and beyond. Floral flavours like