The Austrian Who Fell in Love with Butter Tarts

A Cross-Cultural Food Story

A story that began with butter tarts.

For years, I'd been meaning to visit one of Ontario's butter tart festivals. I'd hoped to get to the one in the little town of Paris, but this year the Butter Tart Festival in Fergus fit our schedule, so we made the short drive with good friends to see what all the fuss was about.

Good friends say yes when you invite them to go along to a random butter tart festival.

Butter tarts in every imaginable flavour.

As I wandered past table after table of tantalizing butter tarts—some with raisins, some with pecans, some with unexpected additions of chocolate bars or bacon, many proudly claiming to be the best—I found myself smiling.

Not because I was trying to decide which butter tart to buy.

Because I was thinking about Austria.

That probably seems like an odd place for a Canadian butter tart festival to take me.

After all, Austria gave the world Sachertorte, apple strudel, and some of Europe's most celebrated pastries.

So I never expected a young Austrian to fall completely in love with... butter tarts.

For decades, my father led music and culture tours to Vienna. Every group stayed at Pension Pertschy, a charming family-run pension tucked into the historic centre of the city. Over the years we became close not only to the Pertschy family, but also to many of the people at the reception desk who welcomed our tour groups, answered endless questions, and quietly made every visit feel like coming home.

One of those people was Doris.

Years later, when Tim and I travelled to Vienna with our young children, Tessa and Willem, Doris asked whether we would consider hosting her nineteen-year-old daughter for a summer in Canada. In exchange, Desi would help with the children and a few light household responsibilities.

We agreed before we had even met her, and it was one of the best decisions we ever made.  Two years later, we had the pleasure of welcoming her younger sister, Sophie, to Canada as well.

Desi was only nineteen, but she possessed a maturity well beyond her years.

She understood family dynamics instinctively. Within weeks she knew the names of our relatives and friends, remembered who belonged to whom, and somehow seemed to know exactly what needed doing before anyone asked.

She was extraordinary with our children.

Tessa was eight.

Willem was four.

She never viewed looking after them as a job. She entered completely into their world.

One of our family's daily rituals was "Tucker Time."

Tucker was Tessa's hamster, and every evening we'd feed him, play with him, and sing the ridiculous little Tucker Time song we'd invented.

Without the slightest hesitation, Desi joined right in.

As we prepared for my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration that summer, Desi quietly became indispensable. My tech skills at the time were almost nonexistent, but Desi patiently helped me put together the slideshow for the party. By the time the anniversary arrived, she wasn't a visitor anymore. She was part of the family.

The day of the big event, my cousin carefully assembled the layers of the cake she had baked in Virginia and transported to Ontario. When it was time to take it to the party venue, she wanted to hold it herself in the car to make sure everything survived the trip intact. She asked Desi to drive. It was a small moment, but somehow perfectly captured who Desi was. Even at nineteen, people instinctively trusted her with the things that mattered.

The cake was in good hands.

The birdbath on top of the cake was a replica of the one in my parents’ garden.

Food had always been an important part of Desi's life. She grew up with a father who spent his career as a chef and in the restaurant business, in a country renowned for its pastries.

Sachertorte is perhaps Austria's most iconic dessert—a rich chocolate cake layered with apricot jam and coated in a smooth dark chocolate glaze. For generations, visitors have ended evenings at Vienna's Hotel Sacher with a slice of the famous cake.

Long before we ever met Desi, the owners of Pension Pertschy surprised Tim and me by sending a beautifully boxed Sachertorte as a wedding gift. We still have that elegant wooden box and the memory of the handwritten label on the package addressed to “the honeymoons.”

Fresh home from our honeymoon, we shared our wedding Sachertorte from Pension Pertschy in my parents’ garden.

Years later, after Desi had become part of our family, beautifully boxed Sachertortes began arriving from Doris and her family at Christmas and on other special occasions.

Those cakes always tasted wonderful.

But what arrived inside those beautiful wooden boxes was something much greater than dessert.

It was friendship.

A Sachertorte from Vienna, ready to be shared.

Despite growing up in the land of Sachertorte, Desi discovered that her favourite dessert wasn't Austrian at all.

It was the humble Canadian butter tart.

Butter tarts are one of Canada's most iconic desserts—a flaky pastry shell filled with butter, sugar, and eggs, with passionate debates over raisins, pecans, walnuts, or whether none of them belong there at all.

The summer that Desi spent with us, our family somehow found ourselves searching Waterloo Region for butter tarts.

Every bakery had its favourite recipe.

Every stop became another comparison.

Norris Bakery, which sadly no longer exists, was eventually declared the winner.

The search for the perfect butter tart ended at Norris Bakery.

I loved sitting on our deck with Desi, sharing cups of Earl Grey tea and butter tarts. Those quiet afternoons made me realize that something I had always taken for granted was actually something uniquely Canadian.

It took an Austrian to teach me to appreciate one of Canada's simplest desserts.

The years passed.

Desi became a flight attendant.

The friendship never faded.

One year we planned a trip to visit my cousin who lives near Chicago when Desi had a layover there.  We took the train into the city and met her at the hotel where she and the other flight attendants were going to spend the night.

Desi showed us some of her favourite places in the city—the Bean, deep-dish pizza, and a few of the spots that had become familiar through her many layovers. We presented her with half a dozen butter tarts from the bakery that had won our family's unofficial taste test years earlier. 

Years later, Desi was still joining us on family adventures.

I've often wished I could send butter tarts back to Austria the way Sachertortes have made their way to Canada over the years. Unfortunately, butter tarts don't travel nearly as well.

Desi immediately ate two of the tarts and told me later that she ate the remaining four that night.

She also said she wouldn't recommend doing that.

As I wandered through the Butter Tart Festival in Fergus, I realized I wasn't really thinking about pastries at all.

I was thinking about the gifts that travel has brought into my life. Arguably, the greatest of those gifts have been the lifelong friendships. 

Sachertorte and butter tarts have become more than desserts in our family.

They're reminders that hospitality has a way of coming full circle.

That saying yes to someone you've never met can change your life.

And that travel isn't only about discovering remarkable places.

It's about the remarkable people we meet along the way.

That's why a butter tart now makes me think of Vienna just as much as a Sachertorte does.