It took a little longer than expected, but internationally renowned pastry chef Antonio Bachour’s flagship bakery and restaurant in Coral Gables is open for business.
Combining industrial chic decor with soft white-brick walls and seafoam trim, the 5,000-sq-ft space showcases Bachour’s stunning pastries and baked goods in sleek cases amid a huge glassed-in kitchen and future training area for professional and amateur chefs. In the rear, the kitchen turns out dishes for breakfast, brunch and lunch: fresh salads, savory tartines, soup and more substantial entrees.
Even on its opening day, the 75-seat restaurant in developer Armando Codina’s luxury office and rental building is a convivial meeting place for members of Coral Gables’ professional community as well as diners looking for impeccably prepared dishes and those almost too-pretty-to-eat pastries.
“We want to be approachable, a contemporary American restaurant,” says partner Javier Ramirez. Prices are reasonable. An avocado tartine, served on sourdough toast and dotted with fresh cheese, heirloom tomato and micro cilantro and served with a salad, is $14. Craggy oatmeal cookies, pastel macarons and shiny bonbons are three bucks. And the signature pastries, like Yuzu, a mirror-glazed petit gateau made with citrus cremoux, yuzu mousse and matcha dacquoise, are a steal at $8.
Bachour aims for quality in everything on the menu. “I want to give a good quality croissant,” he says. For him, that means using 84-percent butterfat French butter, Valrhona chocolate, housemade granola and yogurt from local artisans Aroa Craft Yogurt. Bachour says he plans to work with local farms for produce.
And he is here to stay. “There’s nothing like Miami,” says the globetrotting pastry chef, who visited 35 countries in 2018 as an instructor.
The new bakery and restaurant is not the only place to get Bachour’s legendary pastries. They’ve also just opened at The Citadel Miami, the new food hall in Little Haiti.
Bachour Restaurant
2020 Salzedo St., Coral Gables
Open seven days, 7am-7pm
Classes at the academy will start later this year
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