Le Rêve has a second address in Dallas, and this one comes with a train running past the window. The gelato and pastry shop that built a following in North Dallas’s Preston Valley Shopping Center has opened at Mockingbird Station, taking over the space that closed as Milk and Honey ice cream shop last year.
Andy Pham started Le Rêve as a cottage business before opening the original shop in 2022, and the appeal was never complicated: French technique, handled by someone who grew up with a French thread running through a Vietnamese household. He began perfecting his macaron recipe in high school, and it shows. The macarons rotate constantly, lighter and less sweet than the standard, and they tend to sell out before closing.
Pham treats croissants as their own discipline entirely, telling interviewers his aunt and cousin in France would never let him hear the end of it if he cut corners, and the results back up the seriousness: a classic almond croissant, a ham and cheese croissant, and the Supreme Croissant, an oversized spiral creation with a scratch-made filling, inspired by Lafayette Grand Café in New York and the trend that made it famous. Le Rêve also runs a rotating cookie croissant line, chocolate chip, lemon, and snickerdoodle among the flavors, stuffed with cookie dough and baked to order.
The pastry case runs deeper than croissants and macarons. Fleur Rose and Coco Ananas lead a rotating lineup of small sculpted cakes built to look like the fruit or flower they’re flavored after, a technique closer to Japanese food replicas than typical French pâtisserie. A Blueberry Cheesecake Tart, a Red Velvet Petit Gâteau, and a rich Tiramisu round out the case, along with a chocolate tart and a rotating black forest cake.
The gelato comes in flavors that shift with the seasons, pistachio, French lavender, crème brûlée, and Vietnamese coffee among them, and it has built enough of a following to land by the pint at Central Market stores across Texas. Coffee drinks lean toward espresso, and at Mockingbird Station that now includes Vietnamese coffee made with specialty arabica beans, the clearest nod yet to Pham’s own background.
The new room leans into travel rather than train platforms, styled after the South of France and the Mediterranean. There is room to sit and linger this time, which the original location was tight on, and Mockingbird Station also gets a handful of new items that never made it onto the Preston Valley menu.
Mockingbird Station has spent the past year adding names, a boutique wine and spirits shop among them, and a dessert counter with a built-in fan base is a reasonable bet for the corner. Whether it becomes a stop on the way to the train or a reason to get off one probably depends on how long that pastry case holds its crowd.
Le Rêve Patisserie & Gelato is at 5321 E. Mockingbird Lane, Suite 135, in Dallas. Hours run 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, closed Tuesday. Visit lerevegp.com for the original Preston Valley location and further details.
