Patrick's Bakery & Cafe

Magnifique, fantastique, merveilleux-- prime yourself with French superlatives before you hit this wonderland of a French bakery. The chef is Patrick Bernet, an Alsace native with a dazzling résumé: pastry chef at the Hotel Sofitel, pastry instructor at the Paris Cordon Bleu, and so much more. Bernet's bakery offers a full line of bakery treats: baguettes with glossy crusts, quiches as light as clouds, sandwiches, even an excellent French onion soup. Get those, but the true wonder here is the gemlike dessert pastries: The chocolate Feuillantine is basically a cylinder of chocolate mousse so creamy and potent it clings sweetly to your tongue, yielding pleasure like a memory too good to pollute with the telling. Yet it's dressed up with black-tie style, cloaked in glossy ganache, and adorned with gold leaf. It's good. The éclairs are marvels, and the raspberry chocolate fondant cake is as beautiful and colorful as a carousel but easier to bring to dinner. Proceed directly to the Richfield strip mall northeast of Southdale for further data. Yes, it's an odd place to find such wonders, but that's the functional difference between Patrick's and its analogs on the continent: Richfield pâtisseries come with an entire arrondissement of free parking.