PASTICCERIA AMORE

PASTICCERIA AMORE

107-06 71st Road
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718) 261-1349

Broadway Bakery, FoHi's 24-hour destination for generic bread and pizza, closed it's Continental location to move one block away into a nice renovated space. Then it closed for good about six hours later. In it's place has come Pasticceria Amore, a small but so far very good Italian pastry shop. Forest Hills has been too long without decent, upscale competition for Martha's (I include Fay Da in that statement), and now they it's here. It's not going to win for seating, as it has almost none, but it'll certainly give Martha's a run for her money with pies and cake.



Unknowingly, Pasticceria Amore made the job of reviewing them way easier, way cheaper, and way more waistline-friendly by having half of their dessert menu come in "mini" sizes. So I ordered all of them, plus some Rainbow Cookies, which no Italian pastry shop can dare do without. They were delicious. The chocolate wasn't too dark, they had the right amount of jam, and they were perfectly moist. Ahh, heaven. I'm eating one now.

The Mixed Fruit Tart, with strawberry, kiwi and tangerine, and the Strawberry Tart (no kiwi or tangerine) came with this perfectly sweetened crust that was just dry enough to have a bit of crumble, but not so much to cause any actual crumbs. I preferred the regular strawberry to the mixed fruit, which probably is because I prefer my tarts with raspberry and blackberry (a la Manhattan's Tisserie) rather than kiwi.

Speaking of raspberry, I next dug my teeth into the Raspberry Mousse, which was very good even though I'm not much of a mousse person. It was certainly better with the white chocolate cap that it had than it would have been without it. The Hazelnut Mousse was just about perfect, though it was almost impossible to pick up without it becoming soup in my hand. I was far less impressed with the Mango Mousse, which was bland, gelatinous and almost fake-tasting. As for the Chocolate Mousse, I ordered it in spite of the fact that I don't like chocolate mousses. This one didn't change my mind, but I think that those of you out there who like their mousses chocolatey will probably like this one, too.

Starting to get full and wired from the sugar, I dove into the Eclair and the Puff Pastry, which is pretty much an eclair without the chocolate coating. Both were very good. The cream was sweet but not too much so, the dough was soft but firm. Continuing my journey down the traditional path, I bit into the Vanilla Cannoli and then into the Chocolate Cannoli. They weren't bad, but I've had better cannoli. In the vanilla cannoli, the filling was too hard and the shell was too moist. Meanwhile, in the chocolate on the chocolate cannoli was too overwhelming and the shell was too hard.

The final stretch of my journey towards diabetes consisted of the pine nut coated Pignoli, which I a first didn't like, but which grew on me, and the cherry topped, cream filled Rum Baba, which never did. It was like eating a rum-soaked sponge and while I know that that's the whole point of those mega-moist desserts, they just don't do it for me.

In order to get some interior photos without being too conspicuous, I returned a few days later and ordered a French Napoleon Cake. This was incredible. The best of the menu so far. Light cream, moist pastry. The only downside was that the candy/frosting top was a bit stiff and hard to break through, especially with the plastic fork I was given to eat with. Speaking of which, since I was eating inside, the plastic fork, coupled with the paper plate was unfortunately cheap.



Each mini costs $1.25, the rainbow cookies were $15 per pound. The napoleon slice was about $4.