Best Pastry Shop
1. pía pastelería
Pía Pastelería bears the unmistakable signature of Pía Salazar, one of contemporary pastry’s major talents and World’s Best Pastry Chef in 2023. Her “sweet cuisine” favors balance, texture and personality over excess. Mousses, entremets, tarts and éclairs shift with the seasons, all carrying the precision of a chef who has taken Ecuadorian pastry to its highest international stage.
Cyril carries its founder’s name, French roots and training, but one look at the display cases tells you everything else: jewel-toned tartlets, towering cakes, bûches de Noël and ice creams built around unexpected combinations. At the center is excellent chocolate, worked into bonbons, creams, mousses and desserts. An exuberant pastry shop where there always seems to be one more thing worth trying.
Few pastry shops have been woven into Quito life as long as Cyrano. Founded in 1958 by René Elie, heir to a long French baking tradition, it introduced generations of quiteños to mille-feuille, éclairs, vol-au-vents and tartlets when French pastry still felt genuinely exotic. More than six decades later, Cyrano hasn’t merely survived. Its influence is everywhere, written across pastry cases throughout the city.
República del Cacao begins with the ingredient Ecuador knows best: fine-aroma cacao. Its cakes, bonbons and desserts explore different origins and varieties of the bean, turning chocolate from supporting act into the whole point of the exercise. Few houses have made a stronger case for where Ecuadorian chocolate belongs in serious pastry.
Diana Carrión has turned fine pastry into something deeply personal. French-trained and exacting to the millimeter, she works in entremets, macarons and tarts where lightness matters as much as flavor. Impeccable finishes and delicate combinations define each creation, giving her one of the most elegant pastry signatures in Ecuador.
