Cafe named for fave ingredient
[attach]5251[/attach]Tina Su’s life changed the moment she sunk her teeth into a macaron in Paris.
“It tasted like heaven,” she says. “I thought, ‘I have to learn how to make this, it’s my eternal goal.’ ”
Four years later, after studying at Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa Culinary Arts School and devoting a lot of time to mastering her own recipes, she’s now on the verge of opening Butter Avenue Patisserie & Café on Yonge Street north of Teddington Park Avenue.
“I wanted a new direction for my life so I thought why not do something I really like,” she says, adding she used to work as a magazine editor. “I always enjoy eating dessert — anything sweet.”
Along with lemon, peanut, chocolate hazelnut, sea salt caramel, earl grey, green tea, oolong and raspberry macarons, she says she’s waiting until the shop opens to unveil the rest of her flavours.
“I kept trying the recipes over and over again,” she says. “I threw out thousands of macarons just to make them perfect. Now I have the perfect product, I’m very proud of it.”
Tina and her brother Calvin will also serve chocolates, pastries, cakes, tarts, croissants, baguettes and espresso based drinks, which are roasted locally. They plan on being up and running before mid-December and will also offer breakfast.
“We spent like four months just designing and redesigning the packaging,” Calvin says. “Everything is custom made.”
Tina, who also lives nearby at Yonge Street and Sheppard Avenue, says the name of the café is based on her favourite ingredient.
“I was thinking about the time I stayed in France and every morning I had butter on a fresh baguette and how good they are and it’s a great colour and it’s a great name for my company so I named it ‘Butter Avenue’,” she says.
“Unlike the others we use fresh butter,” Calvin adds. “It’s not artificial, it’s real butter so it’s more on the organic side.”
Tina says she wants to show everyone how dainty and fun macarons can be and plans on baking daily to keep everything as fresh as possible.
“We want to establish our name and we want people to recognize our name and our product and hopefully we can open another store,” she says.
