Angie from seasaltwithfood invited Polly and I for a get together at Thomas Haas in North Vancouver. Polly and I seldom venture so far for our cake meet although Thomas Haas has been on our list of places to visit, we have yet to travel so far for dessert. But for Angie’s sake, we made the trip to North Vancouver. If I remembered clearly, our last cake meet with Angie was at La Petite France last November.
Thomas Haas is located in a kind of industrial area with a private school just across it. It’s kind of out of the place for a dessert place but believe it or not, this is a very busy outlet. Customers were taking advantage of the great spring weather to enjoy their dessert at the patio.
Thomas Haas is a chocolatier who believe that passion and integrity is the essence for true artisan craftsmanship. They showcase their art piece right at the front counter.
Being passionate with their chocolate, they have quite some varieties of truffles and chocolate pieces on their display counter. But we are not really into chocolate but more for their cakes.
Besides chocolates, Thomas Haas also have a wide range of pastries …
… and cakes. We love this place already.
Polly and Angie ordered Café au Lait for their drinks. They look too pretty to drink.
I had an iced Coffee Latte instead since it was quite warm that day.
We ordered a few items to share. The above is the Double Baked Almond Croissant. I had read somewhere before that this is a must try item in Thomas Haas. The pastry is very light and the filing is moist and the toasted almond slices give it another dimension of texture. This is really great. Unfortunately, we had a mishap with our first piece of croissant as it just slid off the plate we we want to bring it out to the patio. What a waste.
We also ordered a Roasted Duck Panini which was on sale at the time. The crusty bread has raisins which adds some sweetness to it. I believe that it is also spread with chutney which the sweetness complements the duck meat very well.
Polly loves cheesecake, so we ordered the above Almond Mascarpone for her sake. This is made with light mascarpone cream and layered with soft almond sponge cake and amarreto and espresso. Perhaps, we ate this piece towards the end, it gets quite soft.
We also ordered this Exotic Cheesecake which is covered with some passionfruit and mango topping. It is made with classic cream cheese.
The last item is one of Thomas Haas best seller, which is Crispy Chocolate Raspberry. It is dark Manjari chocolate-raspberry mousse, light vanilla Bavarian, chocolate sacher sponge cake, and crispy hazelnut wafer.
We had a wonderful time catching up with Angie. Angie is so kind to pay for the bill as she had a great run of her blog. Angie, thank you so much for sharing your success with us.
The Double Baked Croissant and the Pate du Fruit are my regular orders there. They are opening a second location in Kits right by Lumiere/db Bistro. (Thomas Haas used to be the Boulud’s pastry chef at Daniel in NYC.)
I’m so glad you reviewed this place! We don’t have much reason to go to North Van except for car servicing (at the Auto Mall) and now we know to wander over. The cakes are just grand! And NPY really like the sandwich (I thought it was pricey :D) we had. We shared a chocolate dome and I hanker to get to try something else next servicing!
The roasted duck panini sounds delicious!