BEST CHOCOLATE ALMOND CROISSANT EVERRRRRR.
just had to say that first. it was amazee. i came here for the macarons. i am obsessed with those little things and unfortunately, the city where i go to school doesn't have any good macaron bakeries. with atelier's stunning five-star yelp rating, i had high expectations! :) i was pleasantly surprised to find that the macarons here weren't ridiculously-priced like the nyc ones i've had. instead of $3-4 each, they were just $1.75 apiece. atelier had a really weird/confusing pricing system though. the macarons could come individually or in boxes (where you got to pick the flavors). you could get a container of 2, or another number like 10, 12, 20, etc. you'd think that the more you bought, the cheaper it would be, but it was actually more expensive per macaron to get a box of 10 than 10 individual ones... i'm sure there was some reason for it, but it wasn't clear from the sign. anyway, we got a box of 12 mainly because there were 12 flavors and of course, i had to try them all! but also bc the box of 12 knocked the per-piece price down one whole cent! crazy i know! haha. oh btw, if you get like 300, i think the per-piece price goes down to $1.50-something... yup. the hubs got something called a canele? it was like a custardy baked thing... hard to explain. but either way, it was not that great and was almost $2 for this bite-sized thing. so after oohing and ahhing at my lovely box of macarons, we decided to try them all! it was then that i noticed that i had no idea what the flavors were. there were no signs in the bakery nor any slip of paper in the box with the flavors. i suppose i could have asked about the flavors at the store, but it slipped my mind. soo we played the guessing game, but i could really only tell for like maybe 3 of the 12 flavors. aka they all tasted pretty much artificial. all of the brownish ones just tasted like a mix of chocolate/espresso/ganache. the pinkish ones tasted kinda raspberry-like? but really just very artificial. we had no idea what the green one was supposed to be.. green tea? it was almost bitter. :( anyway, one of the cofffee-tasting ones was pretty decent! but the rest were just okay. i'd say 3/5 for macarons. the texture was all off too... way too chewy in the center. and one of them had this weird raspberry jam filling that didn't go with the cookie at all. aside from the fact that we spent over $20 on not-so-great cookies, this was all redeemed by the uber amazing and GIGANTIC chocolate almond croissant i got (less than $3 i think). the place also had a bunch of other super cute french confections as well as french sandwiches and bottles of wine. if i'm ever back in miami i'll definitely be back for my yummy croissant as well as maybe a few other pastries. but sorry, no more macarons from here. they also have this check-in program where you can scan a frequent customer card and accumulate points for free stuff like pastries. there is a bit of a fluke where you can check in as many times as you want during one visit though.. basically the system doesn't limit you to once every certain number of hours, so yeah.... :P read more