Romancing the Bakery

A gentle reminder for some of the confectionery spaces I've come to know. Mind you, there are many more, but I've tried to be as civil as possible with these places that hold special places in my heart, in no particular order. Enjoy, comrades.

City Cafe Bakery

I don’t find myself at City Café Bakery often, and when I do, it’s because I’m totting around my niece and nephew along with my sister. Nonetheless, she’s resolute: City Café Bakery’s da bomb. And, as I am a democratic eater, I thought I’d give it a good mention, because many recommend it. I personally do not have any major qualms with it, though I feel its offerings are ordinary in the baked goods department. What appeals to the masses, aside from the food, for City Café is the ethos of community it offers and always has. It polices consumer ethics with the honour system. Inside its garage/loft/diner interior customers buy goods and place their change in a jar. That’s right, cash only. But, if you’re feeling a little anarchic you can always stiff the bakers and literally vote with your dollar. You could very well refuse to pay if you don’t think the goods are up to par. An assortment of bagels, tarts, and bars, as well as pizzas are offered. The loaves come at a reasonable 3.25. Smaller goods, like bars at a questionable 2 dollars; but there’s never tax. Coffee’s fair trade. Again, community ethics.

Ottawa Street South

Kitchener, ON 

N2G 3S7

CASH ONLY

The Princess Cafe

The Princess Cafe has a popular following and is favoured, if anything, for its quaint space. Although I myself appreciate it far more for its rare novelties. Offering meal options I think better suited for lunch, the Princess Café offers a great array of potables not merely restricted to coffees and teas. It is the only café I know of in town that offers beer and wine in the setting, so when you’re feeling a little grizzly you can drink like a sailor while your friends all choose pinkies up. Its baked goods are supplied by local suppliers and change frequently based on what the outside bakers have to offer. Great for people looking for constant highs. A word of caution: the Princess Café boasts no barista expertise, so a cappuccino could be nice, able bodied, and foamy one day, but wet and deflated the next, depending on who makes it. So know your help well, and demand they do what they can to make a good and honourable memory of all those Capuchins, tea, or whatever. My novelty of choice? The Italian hot chocolate: a cup of cocoa made as thick or as thin as you like it. Alas, after the Cheeses Murphy debacle (Click here), I’m blackballed from the place, or like to imagine I am, if only to prevent myself from drinking someone’s spit- unless, of course, it’s Laura’s (light of my life, fire of my loins).

46 King Street North
Waterloo, ON 
N2J 
(519) 886-0227

Any Payment

 


Sabletine Fine Pastries 

Sabletine Fine Pastries is my chart-buster. A quaint retrofitted home, unfortunately overshadowed by a high-rise of late millennial capitalism, Sabletine connects eaters to a very romantic French culinary past. It has a monopoly on any other patisserie, all goods being born and bred by its pâtissier, trained, I’m told, in France. It offers all café fair, from coffee, to tea, to an espresso with a rich, heady crema, slight almond body, toothsome aftertaste and sugary aroma I liken to a honey glazed donut. One of my favourite novelties of the place is regal cups and saucers given to the humble and well mannered customer ordering tea. Its chocolate croissants, sprinkled with sugar and pearled with chocolate centres are flakey on the outside, chewy in the middle; and if you can, I recommend going early and getting them warm. Don’t even get me started on the joys of the French Éclairs. Its macaroons are a rare breed in these here parts, and the rich almond meringue that encapsulates a flavoured butter cream worth the exalted 1.50. It may be a lot, but nothing compares to that crunchy, chewy, perfectly balanced dessert, rich enough to have you satisfied with just one.

203 King Street South  

Waterloo, ON 

N2J 1R1 

(519) 568-7373 

Any payment

The Cake Box
Straight and to the point, the Cake Box offers a cupcake that eclipses all competition. And aside from that you can have sugar cookies, prettily dressed, and if you’re lucky, a hearty piece of artisanal cake. Though memory recalls there being more coffee options, the cake box limits itself to coffee, tea, and a small choice of cold beverages. These, I take it, are mere courtesy’s, the coffee being rather tannic in nature, but still tart. The cupcakes, however, are what’re worth the trip, and the lovelies working the line of cake decoration give a good reason to sit, watch, and make anyone feel uncomfortable under the gaze of someone stuffing his face with sweets that have the most unique and impressive flavours, like chocolate mint, coconut, and rocky road. I opted for red velvet as I always do anywhere. A moist chocolate topped by a butter cream with a touch of acidity and a whole lot of sweet. A safe bet for anyone wanting a little familiarity. Cupcakes will set you back 2.50, but quite frankly, I’d pay for them even if they were more. Cookies are 3 dollars each, so I advise a little leeriness, lest you accidently get a stale one. I am also told its legatee was also schooled in L'hexagone as well. Fancy. Check out the new location!

70 Victoria Street North

Kitchener, ON 

N2H 5C2

(519) 579-6230

Any payment

 

Cafe 1842

Café 1842 is the underdog in this culinary battle for café contest. Though I wouldn’t dare suggest a great coffee here, I’ve recollections where my lattes have had great foams. Again, it all depends on the help. But that’s not what makes it a coveted place for this self-conscious culinarian. Yes, its tables are wobbly and its matcha latte at times resembles the eggy aura of an omelette, but if you need a place to go in the late hours of the night, Café 1842 seems a fitting place. Open late, and often in the company of other peaceful café-teers, 1842 is a clean well lighted place for anyone seeking solace, and with the Jazz Room opened next door, you can stay awhile and swoon over the smoke-and-honey voices of the singers that grace the stage Friday and Saturday nights. But its baked goods are my raison d’etre. Don’t be fooled by its lackluster qualities, I’ve never been disappointed with the stuff baked by the cooks upstairs every morning. The lemon squares are my favourite: a crusty, gooey, lip puckering dream. Its array of brownies are another chewy reverie, and the ones that are gluten free expel all guilt, not that I need them. 

59 King Street North  

Waterloo, ON 

N2J

(519) 886-3350

Any Payment

Tweet

ハッピーバースデー!

Yeah, Yeah, I know what you're thinkin'. Everybody who's anybody has been to the Cake Box! (Why does that sound vaguely familiar? Why does vaguely familiar sound vaguely familiar? What can I say? I'm a hack!)

I recall my first experience visiting the Cake Box and feeling exceptionally out of place; I had just finished work, smelt of lime, fish sauce and 7Up, was in ragged, chemical splashed/bleached clothes (God bless kitchens) and was coerced by my eldest sister to tag along in order to pick out a proper colour swatch for a baptismal cake, as well as pleasant party favours that say, "Hey, man, we're Christian, my kid's going to Heaven someday, and he's got good taste in confectionary." It's always a fun novelty when people assume that when you cook, you have an insurmountable amount of knowledge about anything food. I was humble then. Now, I'm a total snob. Not connoisseur, but snob. Connoisseur implies practice, training, mastery; snob entails arrogantly assuming you know everything. I was never really arrogant; but people just stopped believing I wasn't an expert. It must have meant I was kind of an expert. I have lonely Friday nights and interest in food to thank for that.

My first experience with the pastries of the Cake Box was approximately three years ago when my sister had, from some rather wealthy friends I assume, received a birthday care package full of cupcakes from the joint. Everything from rocky road (whatever that really means for flavour) and chocolate mint. It was all down hill from there. But I say that in a good way. I was strung out on those things for days. I acted like it was no big deal, but I'd never tried anything- cakewise- more delicious. When I think of cupcakes I think of over sugared, saturated, usually dried pastries with a rather distinct- that meaning artificial- flavour. What is that artificial flavour you ask? Oh, you know it. Like the Japanese technique of KIME, it's something that must be experienced over and over again, felt by the body, before fully understood. I liken it to those decorative rose flowers put on cakes that kids always try to eat, the ones which are exceptionally chalky and usually give the eater cotton mouth, cut inner cheeks or the rare chipped tooth. That artificiality. The kind that when you first bite into something artificial and overly sweet you think, "Oh goodness, I want more!" And then you eat more and then reflect, Oh God why did I kiss her? I mean, why did I eat that much? You belly-acher, you. Now, I can't speak for the cakes, because I, unfortunately, never did get the chance to try the cake my sister bought, but I did manage to have my way with the typical short-bread-esque decorated cookie. You know? The food in the shape of food? Refer to Barthes. I can't articulate anything anymore, anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah- shortbread cookie on a stick. typical, familiar, not undelicious. But it's the cupcakes I'm after. The cupcakes I have to talk about. Flavours so faithful to the real flavours of the things they imitate, it's uncanny. Eating a chocolate mint cupcake made me wonder what came first, the cupcake or the chocolate and the mint. Was the cupcake the fruit of the chocolate mint tree? The flavours were so poignant, so real that I finally understood the notion and culinary theory of using real ingredients. We say it so often, but are the ingredients we use really "authentic" or genuine. These things made me believe it, or were so good at imitating things like lemons that I'm just another gastronomic dupe.

	Slim pickings.

For $2.25 a pop, I'd rather not know the beautiful (maybe ugly) truth. Yes, the place is pricey; yes, the place plays to the heart of puritans who watch Martha Stewart and believe they can, just by shopping and eating in the space, transform themselves into the idealized hostesses of a Victorian past. Pastels, contemporary furniture, cakes on display like out of bridal magazines, a pleasant all female staff that encourage customers to take pictures of the wonderful displays and edibles they gingerly make- but this is where I launch into a tirade. Because though it is my dream as a man to work at the Cake Box, I never can. Because the confectionary coalition of the Cake Box, I fear, enjoys the gender stereotypes that cater to a nostalgic past. When women were domesticated and therefore the only ones allowed in the culinary space. Pastels, paisley and Rococo are only things a woman can understand; the same goes for marriage, and cakes, and cute-commodified confectionaries like cookie shaped flowers, and tiny little cakes.

At least, this is exactly what I have deduced from visiting the Cake Box since its opening. Or maybe, just maybe, dear readers I'm a little bitter because I've never worked there and probably never will, sadly. Because for me, there is nothing more lovely than waking up, going into a kitchen where sweetness wafts through the air, a cup of French roast waits for me, and baking the most delicious cupcakes, as well as painstakingly putting little silver candy balls on frosted trims, talking about who's dating whom and how much I absolutely love what's going on in the world of celebrity. Oh goodness. But I'm far too manly for that. At least, that's the impression that I get. But I don't want to be too manly. I want to bake, I yearn to bake. Regrettably, I'm doomed to, like so many other customers, sit in the comfy chairs and at the conventional tables of the Cake Box, order an espresso, have a cupcake or two and watch the counter of the five young women who make more of the thing I'm eating that very moment. Like watching the girl you love kiss the guy you hate. That girl, the tenderly decorated cake; that guy, those stupid girls who have my dream job. That and working at Tsukiji as a fish monger. Okay, so I have a lot of dream jobs. But as far as I'm concerned, these kinds of double standards don't fly with me. Shoot. Hiring only women to contribute to an image, or make a space seem more welcoming. Phhh. They don't even say hello when you come in. They just look up and rock paper scissors to see who's gonna be the unlucky one to take the next order. If it were my place, I'd force them to all say hello; and if they didn't, like some English lady of the house I'd say, "say 'hello' girls." And then the girls would say, "Hello girls" and we'd all have a laugh. That's at least welcoming. But I'm not insinuating anything. I just hope I'm wrong and places don't hire based on ridiculous prejudices, not in the great equal West anyway. No way. My maleness can't work against me. Absolutely not. That's crazy. It's probably for the best I don't work at the place anyway. I'd eat the owner out of house and home. Literally; I heard they live on the upper floor of the cake shop.

At least, like some sad Bourgesian character I can go, buy a cupcake once in a while, put it in a nice little package, give it to a friend for their birthday, and live vicariously through the girls who tenderly package it for me.

All in all, the Cake Box isn't a bad place, not in the least. I can't say I've found a better place with more delicious cupcakes in the entire city. Pricey but expected. It keeps the unserious customers out. But this is at least one place that lives up to the old cliché that you get what you pay for.

So that's that. Yes, it's been around for a while, it does well, and there's probably been a billion other pieces written about. But none from this fella's mouth. None this real like the city it's situated in (Oh? Don't get the allusion? Guess you're not a fan then), none this honest; and for that, I make no apology (why does THAT sound vaguely familiar too?).

The Cake Box271 King Street West
Kitchener, ON N2G 1B1
(519) 579-6230
 

Tweet

Adventures in Food Land

Know this Dear Reader:

Staying up until 3 a.m. watching a shock Japanese film entitled, Tokyo Gore Police is always an awesome idea. It is however, not an awesome idea if you plan on getting up early the next morning to visit a patisserie. "Ugggghhhh, patisserie agaaiiinnnn!" Now, now, I didn't visit the place after all. I planned on it, but I didn't. I, instead, got distracted with company, visiting cafes, picking up pants, wandering downtown, kind-of-grocery shopping, harassing company's family members, schmoozing with chocolatiers, AND visiting patisseries. Anyway, I didn't even visit the place I wanted to visit, on account of the fact that it was just another chain- and I got lost.

But, I assure you I won't allow my poor sense of direction to effect this entry. At least not that much.

So, on my way to another patisserie, aptly named La Patisserie (I know), I recalled all those specialty food stores my sister told me about. Especially one that, apparently, had a patissier or chocolatier, or sushi chef. It had a sushi chef. Who,conveniently, helped out with the preparation of every other food: casarole, canneloni, you name it. Now, it's a sure bet that in Kitchener-Waterloo (in the well to do places that is) there is always one specialty food store: David's gourmet, Dave's Gourmet, Donna's Gourmet, Donna's little sister Gourmet, Someone's Gourmet who's name starts with "D." Sure, a year or two ago it seemed like a good idea, but good god man, now it might just be an eye-sore. And anyway, I'm not here to plug the peasant food of Sicily repackaged as specialty and decadence (there's that word again!). If you're rich enough to buy the stuff, good on ya; if you're ignorant enough to assume it's probably the best around and the price is just justification of that, I'm sorry. Don't be offended, I go too; sometimes to people watch, other times to pretend I'm in some kind of food museum where the packaged food is expensively priced specifically to prevent people from buying it. Somewhere, I'm sure.

Casa Mia doesn't fall too far from that tree, save, of course, for its amalgamation of cafe and deli and specialty food store character. I think the others just have delis. No wait. It's more or less the same wherever you go. Casa Mia did have an open concept cafe though, tastefully decorated with backyard furniture, I'm assuming because they sunk the last of their budget in that chocolatier from Zurich. Hey, that's what I was told. Until I asked, after parusing the pastries and asking the brutally honest cashier where the guy from Zurich was. His response was a simple: "We get our pastries from suppliers." "But the supplier's from Zurich right? RIGHT?"
My friend wanted some pepperettes. I wanted a chocolatier.


For what it was however, Casa Mia was a nice place; most specialty stores feel small and stuffy. This one was spacious; whether on purpose or not, I'll never know. Service was good, maybe because at 10 a.m., it wasn't busy. But I couldn't complain. So, we visited the quaint little "cafe" section- and I use that term loosely- remember the patio furniture? We visited the baked goods, the espresso machines, the Swiss, or Swedish biscotties. I can't remember, I was just amazed they even existed. Eventually, we ordered. Pecan tarts and capuccinos. The tarts . . . tasted like sweet, buttery tarts. Generally delicious. The capuccinos, equally so. What else is there to say? They have some good suppliers? At least the pastries looked good, but what was the point? Where was the magic? I bet a chocolatier does work there, I just asked the wrong guy. I bet.


So, after some talk about mutant engineers and vagina dentata, my pleasant company and I were off to none other than Sablétine. Unorthodox, I know; but I was talking about it too much. How could I refuse? At least this time, near 12 in the afternoon it was empty. And we were foolish enough to awkwardly gawk and stay long, sitting on their lovely IKEA-esque chairs in front of their IKEA-esque tables (to use the French). Take that Casa Mia. It was like a tea party. It was like Alice wasn't the creation of some tight-wad creeper who liked children, but the trendy creation of an Austrian furniture designer, who just thought guys who worked too long in hat factories and had strung out rabbit friends, rejected from Trix casting calls, were so passé, and preferred quiet afternoons sipping peppermint tea, eating sweet breads and talking about The City and fathers who built skate parks for their otherwise spoiled and disinterested kids. You probably can`t make the connection, but don`t worry, you`re not supposed to anyway.

So, back on the subject of eating: we did try a sweet bread made with orange water smothered in an almond topping which I ignorantly mistook for a cookie. Should I even use the "D" word here? Is it really that necessary? I can only liken the flavour to its snooty French roots. That and the raw aroma of tea leaves. When you smell them, of course. Something I find remarkably appealing. That may be a terrible comparison, but I couldn't describe it to my friend either. It was friggin' remarkable. But we had business to take care of! We still had another patisserie to visit.


So we drove . . . way too far, in the wrong direction. Yeah, I took urban studies once. I was more interested in the people though. We weren't lost. I just didn't know where a particular street was. If anything, it was lost. And we were downtown. Kitchener. Past that, even. And that only meant one option: Hong Kong plaza. Grocery stores. Shelves with Asian celebrities put on boxes of coffee biscuits. I made it up to my driver by buying her some mooncakes and Thai coffee, and with funny anecdotes about the woman with blonde highlights in her Vietnamese hair. And then we visited Nova Era. I know, right? Only to ask directions though. Don't worry, I was the only one looking stupid. Especially when I stopped outside to take a picture of a new all you can eat sushi place that was opening next door. Expect that adventure in the near future.


My friend suggested we visit her sister. Harass was the operative word. I was game. But not before ducking into Kitchener's weekend market, if only for a few minutes, which, not unexpectedly, turned into a long few, because we got distracted with free samples by the granite-counter-top making husband of a chocolotier. Take that Casa Mia. Trust me, I would have taken alot more photos, but I was having too much fun. Plus, free chocolate.

But finally. Finally, we left, and decided to leave that other patiserrie for now, or for never.

Seven Shores Urban Market and Cafe was our final stop. Let me set the mood: hippies, fat heads, yuppies, freeters, buddha, red walls, organic food, gold diggers, old guys. Coffee. Fairtrade. Sisters. Me, mouthing off to sisters. Oh, and some guy named Ronnie Hawkins. I'm sure the food was great. But we were both too full to eat anymore. I just came to meet someone's sister, and someone came for more coffee. But I'll still plug it. It's a great place to people watch, and feel responsible for the environment, and impress girls who care about the environment, and take photos obnoxiously while people try to seriously discuss the state of clear cutting in the Amazon. And maybe gives alms to Buddha, who I'm pretty sure has no idea why he's associated with environmentalism and fairtrade. It's a long way from detachment and convolution. And that's about as convoluded as I can get in this post.


And that was more or less my adventures in food land. Got up, meandered patisseries, went to market, offerred coffee to buddha, went home, went to work. You're pretty glad though, aren't you? You didn't have to listen to any trite dribble about food and restaurant conduct. Why would anyone want to anyway? Psh.


Casa Mia Deli & Cafe Inc.
7 Father David Bauer Dr.
Waterloo, ON
(519) 725-2272

Kitchener Market
300 King Street East
Kitchener, ON
519-741-2287
http://www.kitchenermarket.ca

Seven Shores Urban Market & Cafe
8 Regina St. N. - Unit 5
Waterloo, ON. N2J 2Z8
519-342-0916
http://www.sevenshorestrading.com

Tweet