March 13: Lady Yum

I've never had a macaron before, so I enlisted the help of my daughter, who is home from college for spring break and adores macarons. She's had them before from Jean Philippe Patisserie at Aria Las Vegas, and from Macaron Station in Tacoma, which closed just three weeks ago.

I surprised her with a 10-pack of macarons from Lady Yum, implying that she should share with her mother. It helped that I also surprised my wife with a 50-pack of frozen xiao long bao from Dough Zone, implying that she should share with our daughter.

Ordering was a tiny bit confusing. I arrived at the slow part of the day, with three staff each performing non-checkout functions. Each time one started to help, another said they'd do it, and then they conceded to the other, and then two more would try. We got it sorted out, and I ordered "two of those, and two of those, and two of those..." pointing and naming the ones I wanted. I asked for eight, but they upsold me to 10, pointing out that a 10-pack comes in a case that'll better survive the commute home.

So, at home, we dug into the choices. I jumped in with both feet, having the lemon one. Its smell overpowered the rest of the macarons in the pack, and after biting through the cookie's firm outer shell into its chewy center, and then into the zesty lemon filling within, it had me puckering. That's a lemony lemon cookie.

My daughter started with the the raspberry chardonnay macarons, which started with "wow", but ended with "good, but the raspberry filling was a little too seedy". She then remarked on the forward flavor of the vanilla bean macarons (and the "nice firmness" of the cookie). Nevertheless, she ranked Lady Yum as third out of the three macaron bakers she's tried. She implied the flavors were slightly too aggressive. "The strawberry would be a good medicine flavoring," she said, adding that it tasted like they really ground down a lot of strawberries and concentrated them.

She's yet to try the "shindig" flavor, topped with Fruity Pebbles cereal. She's also waiting on the salted caramel, which she noted has a very sticky filling, and which caused me to ponder the cost of replacement dental work.

It's definitely not a negative review; the cookies are still decadent and flavorful. I expect most of them will be eaten by tonight. If you like macarons, I'd bet that they're the best in town.

And now my daughter is texting me with macaron locations near her upcoming summer internship location. What have I done?