Champagne Poetry: fruit tart in the Hawthorne pastry room

We do not go to Champagne Poetry for a quiet loaf. We go because the case looks like someone turned the lights ALL the way up on French pastry and then invited ube, boba, and passion fruit to the table, and bakery fans have been posting this pink room since 2022 like it might not be real! The original shop is at 3343 SE Hawthorne in Sunnyside, opened by chef and owner Dan Bian after she trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Portland and with pastry chefs Cédric Grolet and Johan Martin. She had La Rose in Beaverton before this. The room is pink on PURPOSE. We can also see a southern wall covered in fake roses, blush-and-fuchsia velvet chairs around marble tables, bubblegum paint on the corners, and a flower wall with neon wings that people keep using as a photo stop. If you want a brown paper bag and a country miche, this is the wrong door. If you want a fruit tart that is actually built like a pastry, STAY.

Walking in, the first thing that hits us is color: airbrushed tarts that look almost like real fruit, pastel mousse cakes, tie-dye macarons, and a doughnut-shaped chocolate cake that is shiny and bright pink and covered in sprinkles. Bian wanted to bring a pink vibe to Portland, and she DID! In 2025 she opened a second room at 1620 NW 23rd — shorter hours, more of a lounge and Asian-fusion dining night than a full-day pastry counter. We treat Hawthorne as the bakery visit and 23rd as the later, shorter add-on when we are already on that side of the river.

Hawthorne keeps real afternoon and evening hours, which is not how most Portland bakeries work. You can walk in after a movie on the street and still find a case. That later window is not how most Portland bakeries work, and we use it ALL the time.

Fruit tart. That is the order we tell people first, and it is the one we still get when we think we are “just looking.” The shells are crisp, the fruit is glossy and arranged like a still life, and passion fruit shows up in the tart lane and in the entremet case with that bright, sour pop that cuts the cream. If both are there, we do not make ourselves choose only bread! Entremets are the other half of the shop — mousse cakes with names and colors, the Mt. Hood and La Vie En Rose style of work, the Mango Tango that is airbrushed to look like an actual mango until your fork shatters the illusion and you get silky mango mousse with passion fruit and banana underneath. They are why this is a patisserie and not a croissant window. Then a croissant. Butter, almond, pain au chocolat, and savory spins like spinach feta or leek parmesan rotate through the board. We take a plain butter croissant if we want to taste the laminate, and a savory if this is lunch. Macarons are here if you need a small box. The brûlée lava cheesecakes — original, matcha, ube — are the “we are staying” order, and the Japanese soufflé pancakes are the jiggly, syrupy cloud people keep coming back for. We do not clean the case. We pick a tart, an entremet, and one croissant, and we leave before we invent a fourth reason.

Hawthorne is the everyday bakery. Confirm 23rd before you cross town for pastry; that shop runs a shorter week and is built as much for dinner and drinks as for a morning case. The Hawthorne room is small and pretty, and weekend late morning fills up fast. If you want a whole entremet or a celebration cake, order ahead rather than hoping the display still has the flavor you saw on a phone. The room is a photo magnet, and we still come for the look AND the tart. This is Asian-French on purpose, not “French with a special.” Ube, matcha, boba, and passion fruit are the point, not a garnish. We come hungry enough for one plated dessert and one thing we can eat walking toward 34th. Street parking on Hawthorne is the usual Hawthorne game; we do not circle forever. If the tart case is thin, get the croissant and come back. The shop will still be open later than the morning bakeries on the same street!

More on the bakery: Champagne Poetry Patisserie