Les Delices

In my long-running quest to find cake of any quality in America, (rare, other than apparently in Aran's home), I stopped by Les Delices bakery on East Gude Street in Rockville, MD, last night. (full disclosure, it's owned by a family friend).

The fruit tart was clearly a sideshow. Although I prefer bakers to underplay sweetness, the pastry cream was unsettlingly neutral, and the pie crust both too thick and a little burnt. Nor was I totally impressed with what the almond croissants looked like - (why were they sliced in half? ).

But these are minor gripes, because the chocolate cake (what in France would be called something like a pave au chocolat, or effectively, an opera without the coffee layers) was very good. A crisp, flavorful biscuit at the bottom was a terrific setting for chocolate buttercream of real quality (the Washington DC area is positively rife with truly appalling "French" bakeries, and the most appalling part of most of them is the wretched, stinking, canned whipped cream, chemical gunk-tasting sludge they claim is cream). Most important, the cake avoided many of the pitfalls of the usual American attempt to do French pastry -it wasn't too big, or too sweet, or cloying, or too complicated, or too refrigerated, or stale. At $3.50, the small slice is expensive for around here. But it's the equal of anything I've had in New York, except for Payard's opera, which I judge to be a little more refined (as well as a full dollar more expensive).