Banh mi meets croissant as pastry chef creates 'flavour architecture' at Crème Café and Pâtisserie

This story originally published Aug. 21, 2023.

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

Crème Café and Pâtisserie, 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 Crème Café 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. Crème Café's star pastry, for instance, is the choux or cream puff.

"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. Crème Café's most popular lunch item is banh mi with a croissant used in lieu of a baguette.

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."

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. 

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.