City of Vaughan

Owners, Or Dehter and Nadav Gilad

Lumière Pâtisserie got its name from the French word for light, “lumière,” but there’s more to the story. The chef pâtissier and co-founder of the bakery café is Or Dehter, and the Hebrew word for light is “or.” It made sense, then, that Dehter and her husband and business partner, Nadav Gilad, gave their bakery an authentic name that’s both a nod to her Jewish culture and to the fine French desserts they specialize in.

Patrons have been flocking to Lumière Pâtisserie for homemade bread, pastries, cakes and petits fours since they opened their shop in summer 2022. “We’re a modern French pâtisserie, artisanal bakery and European coffee bar. We make everything in-house and take great pride in using local, seasonal ingredients,” Gilad says. “Both Or and I have an extreme love of the process—food is never about a single action or point in time. Instead, it’s about the hard work of many people. It takes 28 hours to make bread and two to five days to make a cake or dessert. Watching this process makes all the hard work and sacrifices worth it.”

Owners showcasing the selection of goods in-store

Gilad and Dehter were born in Israel and moved to Vaughan in 2019. She’s a trained pastry chef and he managed a handful of cafés in Tel Aviv, then went to culinary school. During the pandemic shutdown, he mastered the art of baking sourdough while they talked about their lofty ambitions. “A pâtisserie was always Or’s dream, and a café has been mine since I was eight years old. This is a manifestation of our collective dreams.”

Of course, opening a brick-and-mortar location can be challenging and expensive. When it comes to costs, the grant the pair received from the My Main Street program has been essential in funding their operations during their first year. (They also received funds from the Starter Company Plus program.) “It allowed us to purchase more workbenches and storage containers, and we were also able to increase our marketing efforts, mostly on social media platforms. We used a portion of the grant to experiment with advertising on Yelp and printing and handing out flyers,” he explains. “But we were also able to acquire custom packaging. We ordered special boxes, bags and cups, which take about three months to create and print.” As for challenges the team has faced and the dedication it takes to run the pâtisserie, Gilad says they’re lucky to work with an ethnically diverse staff from all over the world who bring immense talent to the café.

Patisserie available at Lumiere

Speaking of diversity, the menu offers an assortment of perfectly mouth-watering bites. “Ontario is where our produce is grown, but culturally, our flavours come from everywhere,” he says. And although they have a wide variety of sweets available (Dehter’s favourite dessert is the Sesame Citron Vert), the chefs both prefer more savoury treats—especially those that have stories or deeper meanings behind them. “Cna’an country loaf, for example, is my favourite bread on the menu,” says Gilad. “It tells my story through food. The ingredients originate from Israel but grow better here in Canadian soil.”

lumierepatisserie.ca

1102 Centre Street, unit 1, Vaughan