Lafayette Grand Café & Bakery

Lafayette Grand Café & Bakery

380 Lafayette Street

New York City, NY 10003

(212) 533-3000

As one of the most talked about restaurants this year, we made reservations to eat at Lafayette on our second day of vacation. This place was pretty grand for New York standards, the restaurant was large with ample seating on the main floor and up by the windows. The patio was open and filled with guests as it was such a lovely day.

There's a beautiful bar...

and a spacious dining room. No elbow to elbow sitting with the people at the next table! We were seated in the banquettes by the large windows.

I ordered the East Coast Halibut with sweet corn and sauce poivrée. I liked the corn, mushrooms, and tomatoes more than the fish itself, but can say that while the halibut was nicely cooked, there just wasn't a lot of flavours.

Howard tried the Dry-Aged Strip Steak Frites with béarnaise butter. I was more interested in his shoestring fries, yum! The steak was medium rare as ordered and satisfied his craving.

One of the main reasons I wanted to eat here was the accompanying bakery.

Right near the entrance of the restaurant, you can come grab-and-go or quickly eat at the limited seating in this area.

Have a look at those tarts! Fresh Fruit, Honey-Spiced Custard, Raspberry and Pistachio, Double Chocolate and Caramel Pear, and Passion Fruit Cheesecake.

As for the éclairs, they had Lemon Meringue, Chocolate, Butterscotch Coffee, and Peaches and Cream that day.

What about the petits gâteaux? Blond Desir, Accro du Caramel, Yoshi, Charlotte Noir, and Dauphine.

To start off our macaron tour this year, I knew we'd have to make the difficult choice of choosing which flavours to eat. They had Blueberry, Passion Fruit Caramel, Birthday Cake, Chocolat, Lafayette, Strawberry and Black Pepper, and Pistachio Cherry.

We went with Lafayette, Passion Fruit Caramel, and Birthday Cake. The Lafayette was chocolate and lemon, we liked the pairing of their namesake macaron. The Passion Fruit Caramel was also delicious, but we were not fans of the Birthday Cake macaron. I don't recall it tasting like confetti cake, it was just unpleasant. Some of the macaron shells were also hollow, so they lost some points for us.

Even though we were full from lunch, we couldn't resist trying the Yoshi since it reminded us of Super Mario. A Jasmine tea mousse with apricot compote and a petit beurre base, this was a very creamy cake, I don't think you could finish it alone in one sitting, so I'm glad we shared it.

We might return to try some of the other items on their lunch or dinner menu, but we wouldn't return for the macarons.