In the Preston Valley Shopping Center at the southwest corner of Preston Road and LBJ Freeway in North Dallas, you can find Le Rêve Gelato & Pâtisserie, a little spot that features gelato, sorbet, pastries, macarons and coffee. “Le rêve” is “the dream” in French, and this French-inspired bakery’s website claims it to be “the place where you experience the sweetest dream.” It’s the brainchild of Andy Pham, a twenty-something baker who has taken his home-based business mainstream, fulfilling what one might assume is a dream as well.
Macarons are their signature item, and they sell out fast. The day that we visited they only had two varieties left, vanilla and pistachio. Every macaron baker has his own take, and these were a tad less sweet with a bit less filling than typical. You’re not shortchanged, however, and the filling is also more stylized for want of a better term: the rosette piping is visible on the edges and is more uniform in thickness than many macarons. It was a bit disappointing not to be able to sample other flavors such as Earl Grey, maple pecan and chocolate hazelnut, but when you visit on a busy Saturday afternoon you get what you get. Early bird and all that.
Having had our macarons boxed up to take home, we moved on to the pastries. Unfortunately, we missed out on the coco ananas, which consist of pineapple confit, coconut mousse and a vanilla sponge cake. Clearly, we weren’t the only one who had a hankering for that on this day, so we sampled four different pastries from the half-dozen or so that were still available, settling upon tiramisu, cheesecake aux myrtille, café et caramel and a chocolate tart.
The cheesecake had a vanilla shell, blueberry compote, whipped cream filling and blueberry mousse. It was colorful and consisted of two or three satisfying bites. The tiramisu was your standard but with the inclusion of a white chocolate coin that sat atop this treat. The café et caramel was a vanilla sponge cake with creamy caramel, crunchy pearls and coffee mousse. This was really good and not overly sweet as one might expect. Finally, the chocolate tart was a rich and moist chocolate cream pie with a not-too-thick melted dark chocolate topping. All were pretty and did evoke items one might see while walking down some rue in Saint-Germain on a lovely spring day.
All of this we had boxed up to eat at home, but frozen desserts do not travel well, so we ordered a cup of passionfruit sorbet to eat in-house to tide us over. This was refreshing and not too rich, being a sorbet. The gelato looked really good as well, but we wanted to leave something for next time, so we have red velvet, crème brulee or mascarpone fig to look forward to on our next visit. Hopefully, fingers crossed, other macaron varieties will be available as well, along with the coco ananas pastry. One can dream.
Le Rêve Gelato & Patisserie 12817 Preston Road, No. 133. Open 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 11 a.m. – 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday and noon - 6 p.m. Sunday