Title: Pietisserie, aka "Random Acts of Sweetness"
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: ENU

RETAIL LOCATION CLOSED
July 2013: Pietisserie has closed its counter in Nido Mexican restaurant and is currently looking for new space. Check the website; pies can be special-ordered and Jaynelle hopes to reopen soon.
http://www.pietisserie.com/ or call 510-859-PIES
Temporary pick-up location: 800 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94710
* Enter on 5th Street (Bancroft is south of University Ave., between University & Dwight Way)

Pietisserie in Oakland, CA – update
Review date: May 2013

Reviewing two new pies: mojito-lime/blueberry & kumquat custard. We were supposed to get lemon-blueberry, but somebody messed up and so we got a combo mojito-lime/blueberry. The kumquat custard had a crumb crust; the lime/bluerry a dough crust.

Both were unexpectedly sweet. The four of us – Carlos, me, Mel and Christie – who had loved Pietisserie's previous pies – immediately agreed these were too sweet and not as good. Suko and Ilkay thought they were good, but weren't wowed. This was our first disappointment with Jaynelle St. Jean's flavors, but overall we're still fans. 

Nobody wins them all, LOL!

Pietisserie in Oakland, CA – update
Review date: April 2013

Again?!? Yes, again! I had a credit for a free pie, and Ms. St. Jean kept her promise to bring back the coconut cream pie for the month of April. We picked one up and shared it with our friends. Mel thought it was okay, but her favorite remains the spiced apple. Christie agrees with me, that the coconut cream pie is Numero Uno for us. Carlos wavers between the Coconut Cream and the Meyer Lemon.

We did try two new flavors: 
- Mojito: lime and mint, just a lovely lime curd mixed with puréed mint. Only Christie and I love mint, so we split the little mini-pie between us. We thought this was great.
 
- Strawberry Rhubarb Chocolate Crust: All four of us felt the same way about this mini. The chocolate overwhelmed the fruit, although it was just a thin layer on top, like a moist brownie batter. But the strawberries and rhubarb were so fabulous, we all ended up doing the same thing – eating the chocolate layer separate from the fruit pie. Both were good, but the fruit deserved to stand alone. So often rhubarb is ridiculously oversweetened and one can barely taste it. Here, it was a perfect partner with the ripe fragrant strawberries…as long as you ate the chocolate top by itself.

Pietisserie in Oakland, CA – update
Review date: March 2013

We stopped in twice this month, and I was able to catch Ms. St. Jean working the counter on the first visit. I mentioned that I loved her coconut cream pie best, and she confessed that's her favorite too! So she said she would put it back on the menu for April – it looks like she has, so I'm hoping it's in stock when we return next month!

The new flavors we tried were so good, we went back a week later for repeats to share with our friends Mel and Christie. These were all in mini-pie format:
•	Spiced Apple
•	Blackbottom Walnut 
•	Meyer Lemon/graham cracker crust

Spiced Apple: Spicing is light (I'm not a fan of heavy cinnamon, especially the cheaper Vietnamese cassia), the crust was terrific as always. More importantly, the slices of apple are barely cooked and wonderfully tart. It's like eating fresh green apples, only better.

Blackbottom Walnut is like a pecan pie, only much less sweet (how does she do that?) with a thin layer of chopped toasted walnuts atop the cooked filling. "Blackbottom" refers to a thin layer of bittersweet chocolate painted on the bottom pastry crust. It's almost unnoticeable, but adds just the right touch.

Meyer Lemon was a wonderful lemon curd filling, with the same flavor as the recipe I use at home. The graham cracker crust wasn't oversweetened, unlike 98% of cookie crusts we've had.

The five of us – Inez, Carlos, Mel, Christie and I – couldn't decide which pie we liked best. They were all outstanding.

We can't emphasize enough how amazing Ms. St. Jean's baking is. She also participates in the "Friday nights at the Swan" in the old Swan's building in Old Oakland, at 9^th & Washington Sts. Get thee hence, please, and support this young lady in her new business!

Each mini-pie or wedge is $5, tax included. Remember, open Tues-Sat only; whole pies by special order can be picked up at the counter or after hours, at Nido restaurant which rents space to Pietisserie.

Pietisserie in Oakland, CA – update
Review date: February 2013

We stopped in the day after Valentine's Day, and Pietisserie was wiped out of almost everything! ☹

The four of us (Mel, Christie, Carlos and I) shared wedges of the three flavors they had: Pecante, a pecan pie with chiles; the Okinawan sweet potato; and the Banana Chai with a crumb crust.

Mel and I both preferred the Pecante and the Okinawan sweet potato. One issue with the Pecante, though, was that the chile didn't seem to be evenly distributed in the pie. The center was relatively mild, but when you got towards the crust, there was a big chile wallop!

Carlos said he doesn't normally like pecan pie, but he would like the Pecante if it hadn't had the chiles. It isn't as tooth-achingly sweet as most, and the well-toasted pecans are very flavorful. The chiles are the type that hit the back and sides of your throat, not your tongue, and he doesn't like that kind of heat as much as the more traditional tongue-tingling chiles.

The Okinawan sweet potato tastes like a very good pumpkin pie, although it's the odd lavender-grey color of that variety. Again, it's not supersweet, and has just a bit of texture to it – smooth, but as if it had been riced. 

He and Christie liked the banana chai. I thought it was a little too sweet and gluey in texture; I preferred the coconut cream pie I'd had the previous month (Pietisserie changes pie flavors every calendar month). Both the Pecante and banana were served with some light whipped cream poufed on top.

Our friends agreed that Ms. St. Jean's pie crusts are indeed very fine. The four of us agreed to split a couple of pies on special order, so next week we'll be reporting on the Key Lime Pie. We'll also get Mel and Christie's review of the Chocolate Cream Pretzel: bittersweet chocolate cream over a buttery pretzel crust.

Nido Mexican lets Pietisserie customers sit down, as long as they order a beverage and the restaurant isn't too busy. Wedges of pie are the same price as the minis, $5 each. 

Addendum: We split the Key Lime Pie and Chocolate Cream Pretzel pie with Mel and Christie, and also gave a slice of each to my niece Suko to try. Interestingly, everyone agreed the Key Lime Pie was excellent, but the Chocolate Cream Pretzel was only a poor second. 

Everybody liked the chocolate cream filling, but nobody liked the crust. For those of us who don't like salty with sweet, we didn't care for the pretzel crust at all. For those that did like salt/sweet, the crust wasn't salty enough. Unfortunately, like all compromises, this one didn't please everyone all the way, so we all agreed the Key Lime pie was the winner by a mile. 

I really loved the Coconut Custard mini-pie I tried the first time, but in checking Pietisserie's website it isn't listed for the next few months (Ms. St. Jean changes the list of pies as the start of the new month gets closer). I'm hoping it will turn up soon, although the Meyer Lemon pie for March sounds intriguing. 

Whole pies, special order only, range from $24-$26.

Pietisserie, aka "Random Acts of Sweetness"
444 Oak St. @4^th St., Oakland, CA (inside Nido, a Mexican restaurant)
http://www.pietisserie.com/
Review date: February 2013

Please indulge me, as I outline the very slow and painful upswing – which is still in process – of this all-important area of Oakland. I speak of the Jack London Square area, whose fortunes have risen and fallen, risen again and fallen again. They are currently on the upswing, where we can only hope they will stay for a little longer this time around.

Jack London Square has always had the disadvantage of being just far enough away from the downtown business and Chinatown areas that people can't easily reach it on their lunch hour. The Port has done its usual incompetent job of managing the valuable commercial properties along the water's edge, resulting in decades of stagnation that only occasionally shows signs of life.

Jack London Square holds the rare coastal edge of Oakland easily accessible to the public. It's the beginning of our main street, Broadway Avenue, and looks across the estuary to Alameda Island. Not terribly scenic, but pleasant enough a view.

For many years if you wanted to eat in the JLSq area, you had an uninspired choice between overpriced Bayside locations or the greasy spoon diner Oakland Grill – which isn't half-bad, and sometimes much better than a few of those fancier neighbors. The nearby Fat Lady is one of our favs, but it's better for lunch than dinner, being occasionally sloppy and endearingly old-fashioned.

But gentrification, in the form of big multi-unit condos that have gradually sprung up in this area, one after the other, is a powerful force. It may be slow to start, but as the momentum builds, those changes finally make a visible difference.

In the 1990's we were very fond of the old Cuckoo's Nest cafe, an early entry into the JLSq gentrification process. Sadly, they weren't able to wait out the bad times, and the second recession in 2001 closed their doors. MoNo took over their location, getting some buzz for a while, but again the area let them down and they, too, eventually shut down. Soizic, hidden on Broadway and one of our favs for many years, finally gave up on the area, the owners finding business much better in the burgeoning Uptown area with Millennial-focused Mua and Next.

But the gentrification momentum, once begun, staggered onwards. A cineplex and stores like Cost Plus and BevMo have solidly held up the westernmost edges. Everett & Jones BBQ on Broadway has stayed open – Carlos loathes them, so we've never gone. Its Peruvian neighbor La Furia Chalaca has also outlasted the porn video stores at this end of the street. 

Then a couple of years ago, the Latin-oriented Bocanova replaced the tired Spaghetti Factory to inject some needed foodie buzz. Artisanal roaster Blue Bottle Coffee jumped from an SF food truck and chose a small brick JLSq warehouse to open their only retail shop. 

Now there's an only-in-Oakland vegan soul food restaurant, opened up in a former bar, called Souley Vegan. An Indian restaurant, Ghazal, has developed a loyal Yelper following. To complete the circle, the old Cuckoo's Nest/MoNo location was taken over by ChopBar restaurant, which has built more buzz with their many craft beers, Whole Hog roasts and Sunday brunches. 

At last the Jack London Square area has gained enough traction for dog-walkers and joggers to be an everyday sight, instead of an endless parade of produce and delivery trucks pulling up to anonymous warehouse loading docks. The city of Oakland has even staged an annual gourmet food event in JLSq, the Eat Real fest (see the 2012 website: http://eatrealfest.com/2012 event), for three years running, with great success.

Although much of the Jack London Square/Produce Market area has now been gentrified, a few blocks retain those rougher warehouse edges. One of these blocks stands beside the freeway entrance to Hwy 880. It holds a one-story warehouse whose long-time wholesale market tenant finally shuttered its doors last year. 

Replacing it is a small, upscale Mexican restaurant called Nido, which is on our list to try one of these days, with a menu reminiscent of the early days of Dona Tomas/Oakland. The restaurant news reported that the owners of Nido gave a walk-up window, along with an inside corner of their modest rectangular space, to a small pie shop. 

This sounded interesting! Last week we were in the area walking around (which happens more rarely than it used to, now that Carlos is retired), so I suggested we stop by and check them out. 

Why Jaynelle St. Jean, the owner of Pietisserie, a SF native, decided to open in Oakland isn't explained anywhere, but we should all be glad she did. 

Because this lady makes really good pies!

A good pie is a thing of beauty. It starts with the crust, which is where 99% of pies go wrong. There is no such thing as a great pie with a bad, mediocre, soggy, bland, or otherwise inferior crust. 

Without a good crust, you might as well eat pudding, or have a fresh fruit salad. A bad crust will subvert a good filling, every time. Ms. St. Jean's crusts are truly a thing of beauty. They are so flaky, I thought they were lard crusts, but according to the website, they are all-butter pastry. 

They look plain. But the moment you bite into them, you realize their genius. Crisp, tender, flaky – these are seriously fine pie crusts. 

These are the kinds of crusts you weren't sure existed, because you've never been able to produce them and neither has anyone else you know, including your own mother. And they certainly never show up in a restaurant, at almost any price level. 

Ms. St. Jean sells pies. Whole pies, wedges of pie, pie to eat in, pies to go, special order pies. Carlos is particularly excited by the news that next month she will start making savory pies, which are one of his favorite foods on a very long list.

Most importantly, Pietisserie sells mini-pies. Every month, there are three flavors of minis and four flavors of whole pies. We were told the minis for January were coconut custard, chocolate cream pretzel (salted chocolate) and Okinawan sweet potato. 

Perfect to bring home! I had the coconut custard, Carlos had the chocolate cream, and Inez had the sweet potato. 

Yes, we loved them. And we want to go back, soon. And we want to bring our friends. And maybe get some whole pies to treat other friends. 

Because everybody should have a great pie at least once in their lives. That such a great pie lives in Oakland....well, we've learned it's best to take advantage of things while they're still around. Because you can't count on good things lasting forever.

And of course we got on their mailing list. Didn't you?

Each mini was a generous little pie for one person. If you want to show off your self-control, you could split it between two people, but none of us wanted to be that generous. In fact, this was one of those rare instances where all three of us refused to share a single bite with one another. Because the fillings were as good as the crusts…and that's as good as one can get.

Three mini-pies, $5 each. For this quality, a bargain. $5 should always bring you so much happiness!