New World Pastries

I’ve ordered from this place for about 9 months now. Eric, the owner, is incredibly nice and professional.
I’ll have to say, like previous review, I first found out about New World Pastries from a Groupon deal. I ordered my cake and picked it up at the bakery in Evanston.
When I asked Eric about his business (because his kitchen isn’t a traditional retail location) he explained that he does a lot of wholesale to some of Chicago’s upscale hotels.
Anyway. I’ve never had anything but positive experiences with my orders. I wouldn’t hesitate to order from Eric for my own wedding.
Good stuff… gooood stuff.

UPDATE: The owner contacted me via email and phone to apologize for the less-​than-​excellent experience and to ask me to give the place another try. Because, as I mention in the original review, Eric is so nice and courteous, I will definitely give them another try in about a month. I will add an update then.
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I really, REALLY wanted to like this place, because the owner, Eric, is so incredibly nice. I wonder if this is the reason New World Pastries does not have many reviews on Unilocal — customers who tried the place and never returned nonetheless didn’t want to hurt the owner’s feelings.
As part of a Groupon deal, I ordered the NIKA cake — described as a vanilla genoise cake with mango mousse and berries. With the 50%-off groupon the 10 inch cake was still pricey, at $ 30 for an otherwise $ 60 cake (online it seems you can sometimes get it for $ 45). But I wanted, for once, to get a great cake within my means, and was excited to try this «authentic bakery» run by a French chef living in Chicago.
The owner, Eric, was prompt, friendly, efficient. He called me on the morning of my pick-​up, and made sure I got the cake in time for my brunch party.
This is the extent of my positive comments, and I really want to stress how nice and professional the owner was.
The cake, however, was terrible.
I had my guests vote on which cake we would buy, and maybe I wouldn’t have gone for the Nika if the choice was entirely up to me, but I never imagined it would be that bad.
First, the presentation was very unremarkable — unlike the images on their website, the cake was undecorated and covered with a sickly orange color — mix of yellow mousse and the red raspberry jelly. The genoise was decent, but we couldn’t really taste it because it was buried underneath WAY too much mousse, piles and piles of mousse, so the proportion of the cake was way off. The mousse tasted waxy with a hint of mango. Two of my guests described it as a «lipstick» taste, and I agree completely.
Finally, the raspberries in the center of the cake were completely frozen, even though I kept it out at room temperature for over TWO hours before serving (which Eric said I should do). So yes, imagine eating waxy mousse and frozen berries. Yuck. I guess I expected this bakery to prepare my cake fresh for the day of scheduled pick-​up. But even aside from that (and considering I was an hour late to pick it up), I didn’t expect a cake that couldn’t thaw after two hours in warm room temperatures. Any more «thawing» and the lipstick mousse would start to run down the sides.
What was supposed to be the central piece at a brunch party ended up being something I was apologizing for. Even with 8 guests, more than half of the cake was uneaten, and the guests politely refused to take any home. That’s when you know without a shadow of a doubt that you just served some bad dessert.
As much as I want to support this friendly and nice small business, I would recommend not taking a risk and serving as bad of a cake as I ended up serving my guests.

After having their cake at my high school reunion, I suggested to my brother that he have these folks cater for his wedding reception. So these folks catered at my brother’s wedding reception, even though it was over 500 miles away.
The guests raved about the desserts. One of my aunts was bonkers over the desserts. She said that the cake was the best she had eaten in her life. She said each bite she took into the cake, it tasted better and better. At least three people asked me who the dessert caterer was and how to get in touch with them.