The Whitney Restaurant in Detroit’s Midtown district is adding a retail bakery via a dessert parlor on the third floor of the former mansion along Woodward Avenue. The offerings include wedding cakes, sheet cakes, tortes, and individual pastries.
“Because of the volume of pastries we do here at The Whitney, we can generally offer our retail goods at a slightly below market price but still maintain a Whitney level of quality and uniqueness,” says Eric Bunge, pastry chef at The Whitney.
Bunge, a 25-year pastry veteran, will offer mini-Crème Brulees, mixed berry and chocolate cheesecakes, Bananas Bailey “barquettes,” and chocolate covered strawberries. He will also sell mixed berry Bavarian, chocolate raspberry, and chocolate strawberry tortes. Individual desserts cost about $7 each, chocolate dipped strawberries retail for $29 per dozen, and cakes cost anywhere from about $30 to $90.
Tortes have also proven popular, including mixed berry Bavarian, chocolate raspberry, and chocolate strawberry flavors.
Bunge now offers Bananas Foster and a flaming strawberry dessert in a Grand Marnier flambé served over vanilla ice cream in a puff pastry shell at the restaurant’s third floor dessert parlor on Friday and Saturday nights. The Bananas Foster costs $16 while the Strawberries Sir Whitney sells for $18.
Chef Bunge served as the pastry chef at Fox & Hounds restaurant in Bloomfield Hills for nearly 20 years before opening his own pastry shop, Fox & Hounds Pastry Den, in West Bloomfield. “I didn’t enjoy running the business part of my business as much as I enjoyed the baking,” Bunge says. “I just wanted to make great pastries and I can really concentrate on doing that here.”
