The Best Macarons in Salt Lake City — and Why Fillings & Emulsions Is in a League of Its Own

Walk into Fillings & Emulsions on a Wednesday morning and you'll find Chef Adalberto "Al" Diaz already deep in a batch of laminated dough before most of Salt Lake City has brewed its first coffee. The air is warm. It smells like caramelized butter and something faintly floral — maybe the pistachio black cherry macaron cooling on the rack. The walls are painted in the vivid turquoise and coral of Havana architecture, murals brushed by Chef Al's brother Angel straight from memory. You are, technically, in a Granary District food hall on 300 West. But for a moment it feels like somewhere else entirely — somewhere the pastry is this good because someone simply couldn't stop making it better.

The best macarons in Salt Lake City live here. Twelve flavors, all made in-house, with a precision that has earned Chef Al a 2025 James Beard Award semifinalist nod for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker. That's not a marketing phrase. It's the culinary world's most respected institution saying: this person belongs at the table with the best in the country.

One TripAdvisor reviewer put it plainly: "You won't get macarons this good outside of Paris. The baguettes are perfect. The viennoiserie is out of this world and this is the ONLY place in town that makes it all in house. Chef Al is the real deal."

From a Pressure Cooker in Havana to Utah's Most Decorated Pastry Kitchen

Adalberto Diaz Labrada baked his first cake at age nine using a pressure cooker — the only equipment available in his Havana home. That detail tells you almost everything you need to know about how he became the chef he is. Not classically trained in the European sense, not the product of some gilded culinary school lineage. He learned from his grandmothers. From Cuban TV. From thirty years of relentless practice. And now, from the James Beard Foundation's semifinalist list.

He arrived in the United States from Cuba in 2000 at age 28, and the journey from there to ACF National Pastry Chef of the Year in 2012 is the kind of story that's almost too cinematic to believe. Except Chef Al is standing right there, flour on his apron, laughing about something with a customer, making it very easy to believe.

Before opening Fillings & Emulsions in August 2013, Chef Al spent years as a pastry professional at Harmons grocery stores and then as a Culinary Arts professor at Utah Valley University — teaching technique, sharing knowledge, worrying out loud that the art of handcrafted pastry "might go away someday." That anxiety has driven everything about how he runs this artisan bakery. Nothing is bought pre-made. The macarons are built from scratch, the baguettes fermented properly, the cruffins laminated by hand. The name "Fillings & Emulsions" is itself a play on "feelings and emotions" — a wink at the chemistry of baking and the real reason he does it.

Between 2015 and 2024, Food Network called — repeatedly. Chef Al competed in the Holiday Baking Championship, Best Baker in America, and Sugar Showdown. Most recently he won Bake You Rich, which landed his Cuban meat pies in stores across the country. Utah's food scene has claimed him as its own, but his reach is genuinely national.

Chef Al has described his philosophy directly: "I try to combine the cuisine and culture of my homeland with international and French techniques — to take breads and pastries to the next level with breathtaking flavors, textures and color combinations."

That's not a mission statement someone wrote for him. That's a man who baked his first cake in a pressure cooker, and never stopped asking what came next.

The Fillings & Emulsions Experience: What to Order, and Why It Matters

Salt Lake Magazine called it a "Willy Wonka-esque dreamscape disguised as a Cuban Pastelería." That's accurate. The Granary District location features those Havana murals floor-to-ceiling, and a display case that looks like an installation at a contemporary art museum — stacked macarons in every pastel shade imaginable, cruffins glazed to a mirror finish, baguettes so perfectly scored they belong in a textbook.

The menu sits at a genuinely unusual intersection: French pastry technique, Cuban culinary identity, and the kind of boundary-pushing flavor combinations that make people stop mid-bite and just look up. Here's where to start.

The Macarons — All Twelve Flavors. The signature offering. Made entirely in-house using Italian buttercream and Belgian dark chocolate where called for. Current flavors include pistachio black cherry, salted caramel, pineapple passion, and blue raspberry. One reviewer tried four in a single sitting and declared the pistachio cherry "the best macaron I've ever had, hands down." They rotate seasonally, so what's available in November is different from what you'll find in April — which is either a delight or a logistical problem depending on how attached you get.

The Churro Dulce de Leche Cruffin. The house's most talked-about pastry hybrid — a croissant-muffin built from laminated dough, rolled in cinnamon sugar, filled with dulce de leche. A perfect expression of Chef Al's Latin flair applied to classic French viennoiserie. Fair warning: it is, as one TripAdvisor reviewer noted, "very messy." Order napkins. Order two.

Cuban Meat Pies. The savory anchor of the menu and the dish that won Bake You Rich. Flaky, handcrafted pastry filled with seasoned meat in the tradition of Cuban pastelitos. "The Cuban meat pie for lunch — I cannot wait to go back and have another," wrote one visitor, capturing the way this particular item tends to immediately create a repeat customer.

The French Baguette. Chef Al calls this the "pride and joy" of the kitchen. Fermented properly, scored correctly, baked with a crust that shatters and a crumb that's open and chewy. In a city where artisan bread is increasingly available, this baguette still stands apart as one of the finest scratch-made loaves in Salt Lake City.

And then there's the chocolate raspberry pot de crème — a rich, wobbly custard that arrives in a small jar and has inspired more protective behavior from its eaters than probably any other item on the menu. One reviewer wrote: "The chocolate raspberry pot de crème is the most unique, yummy thing I have ever had. I all but hid and refused to share!" Order one. Do not share it.

Seasonal items rotate throughout the year. Pumpkin spice and autumn spice macarons in fall. Peppermint bark near the holidays. Strawberry lavender in spring. The Kouign Amann — that aggressively caramelized Breton pastry — makes regular appearances. So does the pain au chocolat, made with European-style butter that gives the laminated dough a depth you can actually taste.

Cuban Roots, Granary District Community, Utah Food Scene Presence

Fillings & Emulsions has moved a few times over its twelve-year run — from its original South Salt Lake City location through Provo and West Valley, consolidating now at 1391 S 300 West in the Granary District. The move was intentional. Chef Al has built this bakery around a specific kind of community presence: the daily regulars who know to arrive early for the cruffins, the wedding parties who commission macaron towers, the airport travelers who discover the brand at Concourse A of SLC International and make a mental note to find the real thing.

The murals painted by his brother Angel aren't decoration — they're a statement about where this bakery comes from. Chef Al has described having his brother's art in the space as making it "more special in the way that only another Cuban could." That phrase is doing a lot of work. It means Fillings & Emulsions isn't a restaurant that happens to have a Cuban chef. It's a Cuban-American story expressed in pastry form, every single day.

Taste Utah has featured the bakery. Salt Lake Magazine named it among the city's standout food destinations. And the James Beard Foundation — which nominated fewer than ten pastry chefs in the entire country for its 2025 Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker semifinalist list — put Chef Al on it. For a bakery that started in a modest location over a decade ago, that trajectory says everything about what handcrafted pastries, Latin soul, and French technique can accomplish when given enough time and enough butter.

One wedding client summed up the broader experience well: "Fillings & Emulsions made macarons for our October wedding; they photographed beautifully, and of course they were delicious! They were prompt, and because we had to pick up a day early, they provided detailed instructions on how to keep everything fresh. Definitely recommend!"

Planning Your Visit to Fillings & Emulsions

Address: 1391 S 300 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84115 — inside the Granary/Ballpark District food hall, near Liberty Park.

Hours: Monday through Saturday, 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. Closed Sunday.

Best time to visit: Early morning, right at opening, especially on weekends. Cruffins, croissants, and the Kouign Amann sell out fast — often before noon on Saturdays. Weekday mornings are your best bet for a relaxed experience with full selection.

Phone: (385) 229-4228

Airport location: Also available at Salt Lake City International Airport, Concourse A — same macarons, same quality. Worth knowing before your next layover.

Special orders: Macaron towers for weddings and corporate events, custom macaron gift boxes, and pastry classes are all available. Contact directly for custom orders and pricing.

Don't leave without: The churro dulce de leche cruffin, at least two macarons (pistachio black cherry if available), the Cuban meat pie, and the chocolate raspberry pot de crème. The baguette if you're heading somewhere with good butter.

Why This Place Matters

Utah's food scene has no shortage of good bakeries. But good bakeries are not what Fillings & Emulsions is. It is the product of a man who taught himself to bake with a pressure cooker, crossed an ocean, won a national title, went on Food Network five times, taught artisan pastry at a university, painted the walls of his shop with his homeland's colors, and still shows up before dawn to laminate dough by hand.

The best macarons in Salt Lake City are here not by accident but by thirty years of accumulated devotion to craft. The James Beard Foundation noticed. Utah noticed.

Go early. Take extra cash. And for the love of everything buttery — do not skip the cruffin.

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Fillings & Emulsions · 1391 S 300 West, Salt Lake City, UT · (385) 229-4228 · Also at SLC International Airport, Concourse A