I visited Michele Coulon Dessertier the other day and I’m completely in love with the desserts. This is my new favorite gourmet bakery in San Diego.
Michele Coulon specializes in wedding cakes, but you can drop by for mini desserts, cake slices and order regular cakes as well. I had briefly considered the store as an option when I was looking for my wedding cake, but the prices were simply out of our cake budget.
The store is quite small and not really meant for dining in. It’s more of a place to pick up treats for later.
Upon entering, I was a little intimidated. No one greeted us. There was a group doing a wedding cake tasting and there were people behind the counter and working on desserts. Had I not researched the place beforehand, I would have thought I walked into the wrong store and that perhaps this place only did custom orders. But I knew that they offered individual desserts for sale and I had read some reviews about the lack of initial customer service, so I made my way inside and walked up to the counter and finally got the attention of someone.
Once I did, the person who helped me was sweet as can be. She helpfully told us the flavors of the mini desserts, packed up our order and even discounted me on the cake because she thought the slice she cut was a little too small. I don’t quite understand why they don’t have someone who greets customers who walk in.
Despite the lack of welcome, this place was worth the visit. There were an array of mini desserts (priced at $1.75 each), cake slices ($10 a slice, reminding me of Extraordinary Dessert prices), macarons, cookies, cupcakes.
After much contemplating, we settled on a strawberry tart, a slice of angel cake with matcha frosting and several mini desserts.
Vanilla Bean Angel Cake with Matcha Frosting
At $10 a slice, I was skeptical. Could the cake possibly taste that good? Well it did. Okay I still think $10 is steep, but this was one of the best slices of cake I’ve eaten. I’m not usually a fan of angel cakes, but the angel cake was so soft, light and moist. The whipped cream filling was also light and not overly sugary like most often are. The only thing I didn’t completely love was the matcha frosting. Normally I love anything matcha but the frosting was a little too bitter. I had a hard time not devouring the entire cake. I gave Mr. K two bites before eating it all.
Next time I want to try the Gateau Aileen (pictured below) which got rave reviews on yelp and is made of hot milk sponge cake. I love hot milk sponge cake.
Chocolate Hazelnut, Lemon Tart, Raspberry Cake, Almond Tart
These little mini desserts reminded me of the ones I get from Opera Patisserie except so much more delicious. I loved every bite of every single one. I wasn’t too much of a fan of the glitter though.
Strawberry Tart
This was the only dessert I wasn’t completely fanatic about. It was still good, but not necessarily the best strawberry tart I’ve eaten.
Overall, we loved the desserts here. The cakes are a little pricey but you can taste the quality and the mini desserts are pretty affordable. We’ll definitely be stopping by more often to sample all the other sweets they offer.
Michele Coulon (inside Sycamore Court)
7556 Fay Ave
La Jolla, CA 92037
https://dessertier.com/
Hi ! Just came across your blog ….thank you for coming in ! I am so sorry you felt the service was not attentive ! Please do not feel it is always like that…We do have a person who works the front, she may have been in the fridge or something (we always have her multi-tasking !).
I love your comments, and I thank you…the little tart you had , we know longer make in that size, I too felt it wasn’t as good…we have another size that has more mousse now, and I think it is divine ! I would love for you to come in an try it ! I would love to offer you this, and anything else you would like to try. And I will watch it on the matcha, I think I got carried away that day and may have put too much…
Our prices are what they have to be, we use EXCEPTIONAL ingredients…the little tarte you had was topped with organic wild strawberries which are $9 per small basket ! The matcha is organic from Kyoto , one of our customers imports it….we only use real butter, only Belgian Chocolate , nothing artificial, etc…We buy from the Santa Monica Farmer’s market, and lots of local farms…All of our eggs are farm, out milk is 100% organic from Strauss Dairy in California…you can read more about us on our facebook page, blog (dessertier.wordpress.com), instagram, etc..
Please visit us again, I would love to meet you ! Thank you !
Thanks for your comment. I really did enjoy your desserts overall and will definitely be back soon to try out more.
Yum! We used to go there for dinner every now and then, it was really special, and I loved the mini desserts!
The desserts here were delicious. Glad you think so too!
Mmm, that strawberry matcha cake looks great!
It was so good! I need to get it again and other ones
The cakes look great! Sounds like buying a cake for $28 is the way to go. About how many slices would that be equal to?
I’m actually not sure. The slice was off of a bigger cake, not sure the size. I guess I would need to see the slice and a 6 inch cake from them to give an estimate.
Thanks for clarifying about the parking and also about the “service”! ha ha!
i agree with everyone that small bites makes you try other flavors. i love sampling different flavors and not having to commit to a big-sized dessert (unless I really really like it).
I wish they did mini slices of the cakes! The cake was my favorite part though I really enjoyed the small desserts also. I was totally envious of the girl doing wedding cake sampling. She had a whole row of various cake slices.
Unfortunately it’s “seemingly” snooty service like this that turns me off to La Jolla. Did they just ignore you and greet “other” people or did they ignore everyone equally? The reason I ask is sometimes I suspect racism or cultural insensitivity. “Oh, there’s a minority. They can’t afford our food, so don’t bother…”, etc. Sorry I am throwing out a stereotype, but that’s how I feel.
I know what you are talking about, but in this case they ignored everyone equally. Lol.
At less than $2 for a mini desserts, it seems really reasonable. Plus I’m a sucker for items that take only a few bites — more room to taste more. That vanilla bean angel cake is so lovely!
I do love the contrast of the green frosting with the fresh red berries. I love mini desserts too, so cute and let’s you try more.
Ooh this place looks great. I’ve heard about it but never got the chance to stop by. $10 for a slice is a bit expensive, but the desserts are so gorgeous. It looks like there are also sandwiches and savory items, too, on their website? Hope I’ll get to try it soon 🙂
Yes I saw the sandwiches on the website so I guess they must offer them though it didn’t seem like it when I was there. But I was really dessert focused so I wasn’t paying much attention to other things.
I haven’t been here in years so your post is making me want to go to LJ right now and buy a slice of their cake. I agree that service wasn’t that great – I’m not sure why they can’t say ‘hello’ when someone walks in. But I remember the *one* cake I loved was the Torte Lion Belge (layers of rich chocolate cake, chocolate meringue, chocolate mousse and chocolate cream) – I think the whole chocolate cake in your pic is this actually.
Oh i did see a sign for that one. None of the cakes had descriptions and I hadn’t looked them up beforehand so I didn’t know what was what. I got the matcha cuz I love matcha anything but now I want to go back and try the rest. I really don’t understand why they can’t just say hello when you enter. There were maybe 4-5 people working there and no one said anything.
Oh, I’ve always wanted to go here. The desserts look lovely (especially that Aileen cake) and the mini prices aren’t too bad, although I might balk at paying $10 a slice for cake. Michele Coulon used to do the desserts at the now defunct Belgian Lion (owned by her father). Her son Nathan was the former exec. chef at Modus (which is now Bankers Hill Restaurant) and currently of True Food Kitchen (haven’t been yet).
How is parking in that area? La Jolla, like downtown, makes me cringe when I think of having to look for parking.
We went Saturday morning and parking was a breeze. We found parking right in front of the plaza. Yeah it’s hard to pay $10 for cake, though the slices are pretty big. And I like the cake much better than the ones at Extraordinary which are always so rich and sweet. The minis I thought were very pretty reasonably priced. I might have to order a small cake from here one day for someone’s bday. It looks like a small whole cake is $28.