A great bakery should have great ambition, lofty standards, arresting charm, and great prices. It needs ambition because otherwise you could bake cookies yourself. It needs standards because otherwise you could get worse quality stuff from the grocery store. It needs arresting charm because you're so busy! To get you to diverge from your usual path, it has to offer inducements to both palate and soul. Patrick's does all of this, and does it more than anyone else in town. The ambition couldn't be greater: A true croquembouche takes both the knowledge of a lifetime and the work of an entire day, but you'll find these marvels, these rings of cream puffs coated in caramel and lassoed with spun sugar, in the pastry case at Patrick's every day in the holiday season. The standards are sky-high: Chocolate-robed cylinders of the best chocolate mousse in the state are further enhanced with gold leaf, a sunken treasure of a small disk of cake supporting a circle of hazelnut praline. The charm can barely be described: At the new Bachman's location you can sit beneath a bright yellow umbrella, eat your chocolate mousse from a china plate, and gaze at the orchids stacked gaily around you--and you can even do this in January, since the whole outdoor café is safe under a greenhouse-glass sky. The prices? Fantastic. Six dollars for a sandwich and salad, $5 for an individual cake, and a few dollars for a baguette, a croissant, or an éclair as good as any in Paris.