L'Atelier Barcelona | Review

L’Atelier Barcelona pastry shop and patisserie school is delight for lovers of all things sweet.

L’Atelier, Eixample, Barcelona

Top-class patisserie is all about precision and attention to detail. No surprise, then that L’Atelier Barcelona pastry shop and school is full of cleverly and carefully crafted surprises.

The shop, really a small café, is a treasure trove of design details: a gleaming espresso machine, custom ice buckets for cava and even hefty sporks. Glorious display cases present jewel-like cakes and piles of perfect pastries. The translucent eco-plastic wall linings that have set design magazine hearts aflutter are slightly sci-fi, and the Doctor Who set vibe continues when you step through the back door into a huge multi-room school space. There are 500m2 of kitchens, classrooms, workshops and more, all in shining stainless steel, where flour is flung, sugar is worked and precision instruments ping.

If you are a knowledgeable amateur or budding pro, you’ll find a course here to hone your patisserie skills. Most of us, however, will just go to L’Aterier to eat. And we will leave happy.

I won’t go into detail but nor will I let the photos do all the talking. Unlike many pretty pastry shops, which make cakes for the Instagram generation and prioritise shareability over scoffability, everything I tried here tasted great. Raspberries bursting with freshness and tartness, rich pastries, a mascarpone croissant that will make you cry. It all looks amazing. But it’s the flavour you’ll remember.

The talents behind L’Atellier are Ximena Pastor, who worked under Albert Adriá at two of his Michelin starred restaurants, and Eric Ortuño, master pastry chef and former head of studies at the Hofmann School, where most of Barcelona’s top bakers learned their craft. He once won the prize for Spain’s best butter croissant, and it shows.

For now, there are a few savoury pastries among the sweet treats but no food as such. In 2020, however, when the terrace outside is open, they hope to offer a lunchtime menu based on, of course, pies, quiches and other pastry-based dishes.

For now, it’s enough to order a glass of cava or a custom-blend coffee and work your way through the cakes and pastries. The prices are astonishingly low for this level of quality, further increasing the temptation to gorge yourself. But leave room for one of their speciality ice creams too. If you can.