The BonBonerie

The BonBonerie has run as a scratch French-style patisserie and tea room in Cincinnati's O'Bryonville neighborhood since 1983, working out of its Madison Road storefront for more than four decades. Its signature is the Opera Cream Torte, a dense cake studded with chocolate chips that the bakery insists be served at room temperature rather than chilled -- refrigeration firms up the filling and dulls the flavor, so the torte is meant to sit out before it's cut. Alongside the torte, the kitchen turns out buttercream layer cakes, cookies, tarts and almond-glazed pastries made to order, plus custom cakes and cupcakes for events. The attached cafe runs a proper afternoon tea service on top of its regular counter menu, giving the shop a dual identity as both a scratch bakery for takeaway treats and a sit-down tea room. Hours are limited by design -- Monday through Saturday, 10am to 4pm, closed Sundays -- keeping the operation focused on baking and service. More than forty years on the same street corner, with one torte recipe still doing the heaviest lifting for the shop's reputation, The BonBonerie reads as a bakery that built its name on getting one thing exactly right before expanding the rest of the menu around it.