Petit Four
187 Bay Street
Commerce Court South, Concourse Level
416-368-1221

Petit Four has the makings of an oxymoron. On one hand, it serves tiny desserts, but on the other it dishes up hefty sandwiches. Its conceptual slogan is “An artisanal approach to everyday living,” meanwhile it lives on the lower level of Bay Street’s Commerce Court, catering to cerebral people whose familiarity with artisan anything probably comes from reading the buzzword in trendy urban magazines. And the bakery is owned not by craftsmen but by a corporate entity made up of more than 40 restaurants, which pulled in $150 million last year.

Still, you have to give credit to anyone who opens an operation with the goal of changing the face of take-out by coddling customers with concierges and emphasizing quality in the Bay streeters’ food court. It’s a jungle down there. Most competitors have developed masterful computerized technology turning food prep into an uber-efficient assembly line. Order a meal for under $10 and it will be in your hands before you can say investment banker.

Customers ordering from Petit Four can expect the same. Gordon Mackie, the executive corporate chef of the SIR Corp.’s Signature Group (encompassing six one-of-a-kind restaurants in downtown Toronto), divides his time between Petit Four, Soul of the Vine (which shares its kitchen with the new bakery), and Far Niente. Lucky for his legs they’re all in the same building. Mackie’s rule is that customers must get their food in three minutes or less. To make this happen, an army of eight in kitchen whites (these are the craftsmen) make sandwiches to order, spout soup into coffee cups (screw spoons, drinking soup makes it more portable) from industrial coffee thermoses, toss salads and hand over desserts.

Up and running for not quite a month, Mackie estimates Petit Four is doing around 200 covers over lunch and a smattering of business in the evening (it closes at 9pm). During a tasting of the four sandwiches offered on focaccia ($8 for a six-inch), and one of the three offered on ciabatta (all $8), Mackie talks about why Peter Fowler, president and CEO of SIR Corp., opened Petit Four. “He’s always wanted to do a bakery and always loved bread.” Mackie’s job was to make it happen. “Our thing couldn’t be just bread, because there’s ACE and Fred’s, so what was our draw?”

They toyed with flavoured breads, he says, but didn’t like the “murky” results. “The answer came to me at 4am. When I was a kid I used to eat bread pizzas, goopy, greasy delicious things.” Mix that epiphany with his inspiration from a past trip to Italy where he ate focaccia topped with gourmet ingredients and you get one of Petit Four’s distinct offerings — four types of house-made focaccia: multigrain or plain topped with one of parmesan-black pepper, green olives, or bacon.

Next was the shape. Mackie and Leslie Steh, the Signature Group’s executive pastry chef, tried out square loaves but decided on rectangles. Mackie goes to the kitchen and comes back with a big tray, or rather five 2X18-inch pans welded together. The custom design took a lot of tweaking but now it gives them consistency and efficiency. Thirty loaves can be baked at a time. On slower days, surplus bread is donated to St. Andrew’s church.

Even with signature bread, Petit Four might struggle if its only draw was gourmet sandwiches. After all, across the pedestrian-traffic way, Fast Fresh Foods uses ACE and Fred’s Bread and allows consumers to build their own sandwich from a wealth of high-end ingredients. (Petit Four, presumably, appeals to those who prefer to relinquish their control to the chef’s taste.) But what the other places in the court don’t offer are Petit Four’s desserts.

At $2 a shot, quite literally, as they’re served in shot glasses, customers can satisfy their sweet craving in a dainty way. Capitalizing on consumers’ new love of all things small and snack-sized, Petit Four has found a way to make a French tradition work for a modern North American audience. So far, there are eight flavours to choose from, including pecan banana caramel, carrot cake and chocolate and cherry crunch. They can be savoured one at a time, day by day — but they look awfully pretty lined up side by side on a tray and really, eating eight shooter-sized desserts can’t be worse than eating one piece of cake.

Mackie plans to expand Petit Four into a catering operation in the near future, as well as to increase the number of salad, sandwich, soup and dessert options on the menu. Surely no one will appreciate this more than than all the lowly interns trapped in the towers, working long past dinner time and looking for a quality fuel or an inspiring treat to keep them going.