Thomas Haas Fine Chocolates & Patisserie

This is the Kitsilano branch on West Broadway, paired with a second Thomas Haas shop in North Vancouver, and chocolate comes first at the counter. The display cabinets are given over to handmade chocolates and truffles, with cakes, tarts, French macarons and small pastries arranged around them, and portholes in the wall behind let you watch the chocolatiers and pastry cooks at work.

A chocolate programme with no shortcuts

The house works without artificial colouring or flavouring, which means the flavours have to come from somewhere real: BC wine, Quebec maple syrup, Tahitian vanilla beans, fresh citrus zest, organic herbs and spices. For the cakes and pastries, hazelnuts and berries come from the Fraser Valley and fruit from the Okanagan, bought direct from the grower.

The range is wider than a chocolate box. Cakes and tarts, pastries, confections and cookies, chocolate bars, French macarons, gift boxes and the BLAK Collection all sit under the same name. It is tied to chef-owner Thomas Haas, a European pastry chef from a family of pastry chefs, who has been known to take orders and work the till himself.

A patisserie you can eat in

This is not a dessert-only stop. Breakfast pastries cover the morning, soups and sandwiches cover the middle of the day, and the drinks run from specialty coffee to pots of tea to the hot chocolate that a chocolate programme makes inevitable. There is outdoor seating here and at the North Vancouver shop.

The room is polished but not remote. The portholes connect the finished pieces to the people making them, and small pieces of retail theatre, including drawers that open to reveal a chocolate sample, keep the chocolate at the centre of the visit rather than behind a wall.

What to order

Start with the handmade chocolates or the truffles; that is the core craft and the reason the cabinets are laid out the way they are. French macarons are the other clear signature, and they sit beside the chocolate and cake displays for good reason.

If you want more than sweets, order across the counter: a breakfast pastry with a coffee early, a soup and a sandwich later, and a hot chocolate whenever. For taking away, the gift boxes, chocolate bars and the BLAK Collection are packaged for exactly that.