The Grumpy Barista Review

Are cronuts the new macarons? Perhaps so as more and more cafes are creating their own version of Dominique Ansel’s copyrighted ‘cronut’. This brings me to the legal aspect behind this food topic, did you know that the primary reason that Ansel’s New York patisserie copyrighted the term was to stop the big global chains like Dunkin Donuts from using the word. Who would have thought that now the not-even-one-year-old Newtown café, Brewtown Newtown is also implicated? We have a new word to add to your food glossary and that is Brewnuts, a flakey croissant like pastry shaped like a donut that can be found only in a café that was once originally home to a long time bookstore.

 
So we all know that Brewtown is notorious for their cronuts or should it say brewnuts, but another up and coming café is also gaining fame. If you guys haven’t heard of Dessertified already, the author, Johnny Balla takes amazing food shots and his shot of The Grumpy Barista’s nutella cronut is what put this café on my watch list.  As you would have read in my Sweet Street post, I am developing a liking to syringes in food especially when it is filled with some yummy concoction (this would be one needle that I would take happily).Unfortunately this time around there wasn’t such a cronut available so I had to settle for the rose, honey and walnut cronut and a soy chai latte. I haven’t shown you guys yet but I love my fine bone china, especially my Royal Albert tea sets, so I was thoroughly pleased that they used china.

Honey, rose and walnut cronut $5.50

Chai latte - $4

At first I really enjoyed the custard inside but aside from the top layers, the rest of the cronut was rather soggy and after a few bites I also found the custard to be a bit too heavy. Flavour wise the honey was by far the most dominant of the three flavours and it paired nicely with the walnut and rose, I just wished that there was a lot more rose petals and walnuts. By the way, when served the cronut came with a three prong fork, the spoon belongs to the chai latte, though I would suggest ditching the fork and eating it with your hands because it is a lot more practical that way. Screw being refined and wracking your brain over how to how to eat this without getting your hands dirty, you'll only do more harm than good.