Banh mi meets croissant as pastry chef creates 'flavour architecture' at Crme Caf and Ptisserie - Action News
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Banh mi meets croissant as pastry chef creates 'flavour architecture' at Crme Caf and Ptisserie

Martin Nguyen followed his passion for food across the globe. Earlier this year, he opened Crme Caf and Ptisserie in Regina, where the pastries' finesse is a testament to his training in French baking, and their intriguing flavours hint at his Vietnamese roots.

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A man stands next to a woman with his arm around her waist. They are both holding pastries, and behind them is the display case of a shop counter filled with pastries.
Chloe and Martin Nguyen opened Crme Caf and Ptisserie in the east end of Regina in March 2023. (Dwight Lugay)

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Martin Nguyen is a trained chocolatier and pastry chef who followed his passion for food across the globe.

Crme Caf and Ptisserie, located at 376 University Park Dr., opened in March, but the inspirations behind it date back to Nguyen's childhood growing up on a tea and coffee plantation near the city of Da Lat in the central Vietnamese highlands,where Arabica beans flourish.

Vietnam is, in fact, the second-largest coffee exporter in the world, "So everybody drinks coffee every day," says Nguyen.

Although his grandfather has sold the family farm, the coffee business lives on in its own way in Regina. "At Crme Caf we try to balance between the coffee and the pastry," he says.

Those pastries are a nod to Vietnam's past as a French colony. Crme Caf's star pastry, for instance, is the choux or cream puff.

Several round, golden pastries sit on a baking tray. They have a cracked surface and are each topped with a square of chocolate.
Crme Caf and Ptisserie specializes in the classic French pastry called the choux. They come out with new flavours on a regular basis. (Dwight Lugay)

"If you go to Paris or any kind of patisserie store in the world, they have the choux pastry," says Nguyen. "We have the buttery flavour; we have a crunchy exterior. You can be versatile with the fillings. You can do savoury as well. It's open for you to create."

The business is also known for its croissants. Crme Caf's most popular lunch item is banh mi with a croissant used in lieu of a baguette.

A croissant filled with sliced meat and veggies sits on a plate.
Crme Caf's most popular banh mi croissant is the BBQ pork. It features thinly cut pork shoulder marinated in oyster sauce and seasonings, topped with house pickled carrot and daikon white radish, cucumber, cilantro and lettuce, and housemade Vietnamese mayonnaise. (Dwight Lugay)

Asked what he enjoys about pastry making, Nguyen can't pick just one part of the process:"I think it's the whole thing because when you work in the kitchen, especially in pastry and dessert, you have to pay attention to every single detail. Every single step is important even the temperature, the humidity, the technique. It all has an impact on your product."

A chef's journey

Nguyen didn't plan to end up here. Regina was one of many stops on the road to develop his food creativity.

Leaving Da Lat, his first move was to Singapore to learn how to make chocolate.

He and his sister Nobel operated an artisan chocolate business for five years before Nguyen chose to expand and learn pastry making.

A man working in a commercial kitchen assembles the layers of a choux pastry.
Martin Nguyen has honed his craft through training programs abroad and on Canadian soil, at hotels, patisseries and even an ice cream shop. (Dwight Lugay)

So, he came to Canada on a student visa and studied pastry making in Toronto. He completed a two-year program and worked at a couple of hotels prior to plying his trade at a luxe patisserie.

When the first COVID lockdown forced the shop to close temporarily, Nguyen was on the job hunt, which brought him to Regina. He got a gig at Dandy's Artisan Ice Cream to help the company develop its line of gourmet chocolates.

There, Nguyen says, he had more room to tinker thanks largely to owner Daniela Mintenko.

"She likes to experiment with new concepts and ingredients. We'd make cakes or jelly from scratch and put it in the ice cream. But you need to know which ingredients come together as good combinations. I enjoyed that."

Then Nguyen received a job offer from the prestigious Fairmont Chteau Lake Louise in Banff National Park. He became the pastry chef in charge of the iconic hotel's afternoon service, designing delicacies for high teas, weddings and other special events.

Putting his family first

All the while, Nguyen was raising a young family. His wife, Chloe, had joined him in Toronto from Vietnam, and the couple now had two children. Commuting between Lake Louise and their home in Calgary was getting tiresome. They decided Regina might be a better spot to put down roots.

A man and a woman work at a metal table in a commercial kitchen, assembling delicate chouz pastries on a baking sheet.
Chloe Nguyen joined her husband, Martin, when he moved to Toronto. Now, she works at Crme Caf while also raising their two children. (Dwight Lugay)

So, he brought his knack for "flavour architecture" back to the Queen City and has been delighting customers with near-daily new spins on cream puffs ever since.

Actually, to call his choux a simple cream puff would be a huge understatement. It's a work of art, often with two types of cream filling, a mousse, a jelly, and sometimes chocolate.

A gloved hand pipes golden yellow filling onto the top of a choux pastry.
The mango and passion fruit choux required no less than seven steps: baking the choux; mixing whipped cream and passion fruit curd, and piping them inside; placing a piece of passion fruit jelly on top; laying a thin vanilla sponge cake on top of that; positioning mango mousse molded in the form of a flower on top of the cake layer; piping fresh mango puree into the flower; and gently wedging a piece of sea salt chocolate inside the puree. (Dwight Lugay)

Nguyen begins with the main flavour he wants to use. Next, he considers the structure. How can he physically incorporate that flavour into the pastry without it falling apart?

"You build a dominant flavour and then a secondary flavour. So you experiment with texture and flavour and you keep learning," he explains.

The desire to innovate and create keeps Nguyen going. To eat at Crme Caf is to get to know his family (his wife works there and his sister, who recently moved from Toronto to join them, is an investor), their personal connection to coffee, and their inventive takes on the Vietnamese and French influences that marked their upbringing.

A man stands next to a glass display case filled with pastries.
'At Crme Caf we try to balance between the coffee and the pastry,' says owner Martin Nguyen. (Dwight Lugay)

Nguyen is entertaining the idea of not just roasting coffee for the business, but also developing a bean-to-bar line of chocolates.

When I visit next, I need to ask him how to say "bon apptit" in Vietnamese.

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