Café takes new crack at classic sweet treat
Vancouver import Daniel Wong sells his crème brûlée delights in 15 different, cultural flavours
Love éclairs? There is a store for those. Macarons? Many a venue in town specializes in those treats. But what if you crave the smooth custard and crunchy top of a crème brûlée?
Unless you order one for dessert at a white-linen-table-cloth-style restaurant, this classic treat is hard to come by. “They take too long to make,” explains Daniel Wong, who is offering this classic dessert at his newly opened café, Craque de Crème, on Bathurst St. south of St. Clair Ave. W.
He’s willing to put in the time and sells his delights in 15 different flavours — including one vegan and a few “boozy” — for $5 to $6. For those willing to shell out a $1 deposit, get a treat to go in a mini glass jar. They’re all premade, waiting in the fridge, and Wong handtorches them while you wait.
Flavours include Asian faves such as ube and lychee vodka and Western usuals such as tiramisu and salted caramel. Considering most restaurants just serve plain custard flavour, this is another novelty.
But while a crème brûlée café is all new for Toronto, it’s the second go-around for Wong — he already ran a similar business in Vancouver called Crackle Crème.
So, this time out, he’s launching with a careful plan. “I’m doing things better in a business sense,” he says, admitting he knew very little about even the basics with his first store. “This is my second chance to do things properly.”
He made sure he has efficient flow in his behind-thecounter workspace, and he bought industrial grade equipment (he didn’t the first time). But he’s also made this more of a general dessert café, with a selection of super-cute macarons (made by Christopher Siu), homemade waffles and homemade ice cream in a handful of flavours.
Wong grew up in Vancouver and worked as car painter for nine years. “I’m very good at doing things hands-on,” he says.
While Wong liked the detailed, creative work, he found garages to be suffocatingly homophobic. “I’d change jobs every two to three years,” Wong recalls.
Then, he got a serious partner and that made it even harder.
His partner encouraged him to find a new profession that would let him be himself. While Wong had never really cooked, he thought culinary arts might suit his skill set. He enrolled in a one-year program at Vancouver Community College. At the start, he was far behind his classmates, but soon caught up.
At a holiday party that year, he made Baileys crème brûlées for his friends, and they loved it and suggested he made a business out of it.
As the college program wrapped up over the next few months, Wong wondered if they might be right. Restaurant kitchens were gruelling and stressful places — he knew he hated the work conditions. By the time he graduated in the spring, the idea for a café was fully formed.
He got a storefront in Vancouver’s Chinatown in spring 2014, called his store Crackle Crème, and opened quietly just days after graduating. Af- ter some media coverage, the store got busy — really busy.
Soon enough, he’d hired a former classmate to help out and was able to leave the business in his hands and do some travelling.
After a breakup with his partner and more time seeing other countries, Wong decided Vancouver had lost its charm. “I felt like there was nothing left there for me.”
He sold the business to his employee and moved to Toronto last spring. He found this roomy location on a relatively quiet stretch of Bathurst. “I don’t like to be in business areas,” says Wong. “I feel drowned out.” Wong is still checking out the city and what it has to offer in terms of food and entertainment. His neighbours — he also lives near the store — are still sussing out his café.
Business is growing steadily and for this newcomer with a new product, that’s part of the plan.