Food & Drink
Colville Street Patisserie:
Where Indulgence is Rewarded
David Christensen and Tiffany Cain
Former Weinhard Café chef and co-owner Tiffany Cain and her husband, David Christiansen, are the new owners of Walla Walla's Colville Street Patisserie, where pastries and gelato are the main course.
For those of us who grew up being told we couldn't have dessert until we finished our meal, Walla Walla's Colville Street Patisserie takes some getting used to. No need to force down corned beef or Brussels sprouts here. You get to start right out with dessert. And the guilt? Deal with it!
The most potent guilt-inducer at the Patisserie may be the cannele, which is a bell-shaped baked custard, coated with just a bit of beeswax to give it some crunch. Take a bite and be surprised. Or try a "financier". (At the Patisserie a financier is a brown butter almond cake, not a greedy Wall Street banker.) For something less sweet, try one of the many varieties of croissants.
At the handful of dark-stained wood tables, Patisserie customers also enjoy the variety of gelato flavors made by hand on-site, including fig, red currant and prune armagnac. (And don't forget vanilla – perhaps the best vanilla ice cream you'll ever taste.) Others enjoy the macarons (yes, that's the correct French spelling), mousse cakes and Danish – depending on the season, you might enjoy an apple, pumpkin or lemon cream cheese Danish.
When you first step into the Patisserie, you may think you're in a typical downtown coffee shop. And although the real experience isn't the coffee, when you walk around the window-lined room, you will see customers enjoying lattes and cappuccinos, featuring Walla Walla Roasting Company coffees. The Patisserie also serves beer and wine and offers free wifi internet.
David Christensen and Tiffany Cain recently took over ownership of the Colville Street Patisserie from former owner Matthew Zack. Zack opened the Patisserie on the northwest corner of Colville and Alder Streets in Walla Walla in 2005.
For 18 months, David worked for Zack as pastry chef. He plans to keep the successful tradition of fine pastries and gelato alive. Before coming to the Patisserie, David was pastry chef at the Grapefields and Whitehouse-Crawford restaurants in Walla Walla.
From 2000 until January of this year, Tiffany was co-owner and chef at Dayton's Weinhard Café. Her reputation for creating great meals in a variety of styles is well established in Dayton. Tiffany recently sold her share in the Weinhard café and now shares operating duties at the Patisserie.
We highly recommend that you reward yourself for all your hard work (and if you finished your dinner, that too) by heading to the Colville Street Patisserie for a fabulous dessert – with coffee or a glass of wine. It's nothing to feel guilty about.
Visit the Colville Street Patisserie website.
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