Afternoon Tea at Jin Patisserie

Yuzu is Reading One Fifth Avenue Candace Bushnell

A coworker and I lunched at Venice's Jin Patisserie last week. It took us just over ten minutes to drive there, and we scored street parking right in front of the eatery. There were two showers (one bridal, one baby) going on, so seating was very limited. We ended up sitting on two mismatched chairs with five little "stools" pushed together to comprise our table. Although we had no umbrella to shade us from the sun, we were fortunate to sit by some lovely bamboo which kept us sunburn-free.

We both ordered the Afternoon Tea ($19) as it was our first time eating there, and we wanted a decent sampling of what Jin has to offer. The meal comes with a pot of infused tea of your choice — I went with the Péché Mignon because I like sweet teas. It's a Chinese green tea flavored with peach, passion fruit, melon and wild strawberry. It tasted yummy and fruity, and I didn't even have to add sugar to sweeten it up. A short while after receiving our teapots, our meals came out.

The set we got that day came with two egg-salad finger sandwiches, mini mushroom & spinach quiche, tiny macaron, two bite-size cakes, two mini scones w/jam and clotted cream, slice of butter cake, mascarpone & peach parfait and a caramel clove chocolate. As you can see, the sweets outweighed the savories. Three savory pieces and eight sweets? As much as I like sweets in small doses, I wish there was a better balance.

Not surprisingly, neither of us finished our sweets, so we packed them up to take with us. Before heading back to the office, I had to pick up a box of the much-blogged-about macarons. I went with a pack of eight and asked for a variety with no repeats — there were 10 flavors available.

©2008 Yuzu Eats; Jin logo © Jin Patisserie

I later discovered that the woman packed two caramel macarons, both of which were cracked and oozing caramel filling inside the pretty box. And I have no idea which flavors I missed out on. I made it through the box of macarons in several sittings, with help of my three-year-old niece who loves gulping down pretty macarons like nobody's business. My favorites: vanilla, strawberry and pistachio. Lemon was good as well. Chocolate was okay. Caramel is a never-again. The verdict on Jin's macarons? Way better than Cake House's, and almost as good as Bouchon's.

I would definitely eat at Jin again and maybe try the Lunch Set next time. The savories offered with this particular Afternoon Tea were really tasty, but I'm a carnivore and would've liked something with chicken or fish. So in the future I'll order a sandwich with chicken, prosciutto, shrimp or salmon.

Jin Patisserie
1202 Abbot Kinney Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291
(310) 399-8801