Pain (au chocolat).

We've recently been on a search to find the best pain au chocolat in the Haymarket area. The following entry documents our systematic failure and final success:

We first tried the new(ish) cafe on Dalry Road. Dolce Pasticceria is a lovely little place, despite the shop sign which looks like someone threw paint and wadded toilet paper at it. Unfortunately, their pain au chocolate matched the sign. It was terrible, so bad that we almost disqualified it from the competition. The Pasticceria offering was a "sort of" croissant, that had surreptitiously been sliced in half and spread with some form of nutella, several hours or days before. (The chocolate had formed a skin on the top side which prevented the two halves from truly sticking together.) The pastry was completely wrong. It was soft and dry with no hint of butter. The dough had formed air bubbles and a crust almost like a plain yeast bread and there were no flaky layers at all.

Kate: 0 points; P: 0 points

Our second pain au chocolat was from Somerfield. We thought it best to try the supermarket at this point because nothing could look bad after our first entry and we hoped this would prevent any prejudice over it coming from a supermarket bakery. Somerfield's entry was surprising good. The pastry was flaky and buttery, although it had turned a little gluey under the chocolate. It tasted just a supermarket pain au chocolate from France. Supermarket isn't good enough though. It's not that we want the best pastry every; we're looking for something that you might find in any local village or suburban French bakery. Surely someone in Scotland can do it?

Kate: 2.5 points; P: 3.5 points

Our third pain au chocolate came from the Bakehouse Cafe, opposite the Dalry Rd Sommerfield. Given that this cafe sports small French and Italian flags on the sign above the door, we entered with high hopes. Their entry looked rather like a small hedgehog as it had one small nub of chocolate poking out each end of a roll of pastry. The pastry was pretty lousy (check out the oily base) but the chocolate was probably the best thus far. There were big air pockets inside and the outside was hard and had gone all tough and crusty on the ends where the flour had obviously fried solid in the oven because of the excess fat. Obviously, the Auld Alliance did nothing for Edinburgh's bakers.

Kate: 2 points; P: 2.5 points

Our final pain au chocolat (for this round at least) came from Le Marche Francais which is on West Maitland Street just around the corner from the Haymarket pub. This pastry was easily the best of the Haymarket area. It was light and crispy and the chocolate was soft and melty. It also came served with a short black and a french accent which I'm sure helps for a lot of people. I'm still not convinced that this pastry (or any of those that we might find in Scotland) matches up to the local bakery in Loperhet but we'll probably be running out to Le Marche Francais on weekend mornings from now on.

Kate: 3.5 points; P: 4 points

Look out for part 2 of pain (au chocolat) when we head out to explore suburban bakeries in other areas of Edinburgh.