Tous Les Jours at Flock: cloud cake downtown, open into the evening

Downtown isn't usually where Portland's bakery hunters go. Most of the great laminated pastry is out in the neighborhoods, and the office towers empty out early, so Tous Les Jours is the exception. It's a French-Asian bakery café from the Korean chain (tljus.com), inside Flock on the ground floor of the Ritz-Carlton block, with a street door at 900 SW Washington and another entrance from the food hall.

You can come in from the sidewalk, or even better, pick up a box after kimchi fried chicken or dim sum in the food hall. From the Flock side you can peek into the bakery through a row of vertical slats and see cakes stacked in tall white boxes, pink strawberry cream croissants and milk buns. The case is smaller than a full-size Tous Les Jours, so there's no whole wall of milk bread, but one visit still turned up croissants, curry and kimchi croquettes, milk bread, a strawberry pastry, and the cloud cakes the chain is known for. Seating is the shared food-hall seating, among the other Flock vendors.

The hours are the other reason to go. Most Portland bakeries close early, and this one stays open, with Flock listing coffee and pastry service into the night Sunday through Thursday and later on Friday and Saturday, so a cloud cake after a matinee or a late lunch is easy. The bakery doesn't always close when the other vendors do, so check its own hours as well as the food-hall listing.

Start with cloud cake, the chain's signature. It's sponge and whipped cream, light enough that a slice won't knock you out, and a whole boxed cake works for an office or a birthday. Then get the strawberry pastry and a milk bun. The name is French, but this is a Korean bakery, and people who grew up on milk bread come back for it, pale, squishy and a little sweet. On the savory side, the curry and kimchi croquettes, crisp outside with a hot filling, can turn a food-hall stop into dinner. The croissants are fine with a coffee, but you're really here for the cake and the milk bread. A well-rounded haul is a slice of cloud cake, a croquette, some milk bread, and whatever strawberry item is left.

Don't expect the full national menu. The case is small, and the shelves can look thin even earlier in the day, and since there isn't much seating, plan a short stay. It's a chain, and for cloud cake and late hours, that's no drawback. Downtown parking is hard, so take transit or leave time for a garage. When you want a French-Asian bakery after 5 p.m. in the middle of the city, this is the one to know.

The essentials are on the Tous les Jours page.