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

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Sweet Sablétine

When curiously asking about the quality of Indian pastry this city has to offer, the conversation with a coworker of mine didn't really take off in any strange direction. He said that he would, like alot of us I'm sure, love to open a patisserie in Kitchener-Waterloo and make really decadent pastries and breads etc. Because then he'd be the only one. The only one. The only one that didn't order from a huge manufacturer. Could the mid-size city of Waterloo really ever deliver? Well, if I was trendier than I am, I would have known and could have told my co-worker that such a place exists, and that yes: Waterloo does have one. Only one. A shame? Not for the person running it. Yes, for all of our mouths, especially since being a patissier warrants the creation of many different pastries, and competition to be the best in town. In theory, that is. In France, probably. But when it comes to the only legitimate place in Waterloo, where the owner - a pleasant young woman with a pleasant French accent (or so I was told, I couldn't hear it at all) - has actually been to France and trained as a Patissier (that's pastry chef for those of you who don't know), she can pretty much charge as much as she wants and expect you'll pay it, just so you can say: "oh, darling, I went to this quaint little patisserie," leaving out, "this quaint little patisserie that's been overshadowed by a 25 story apartment complex immediately beside it," and seem more cultured, and in the know, not taking into account the overworked woman who runs the joint, because you yourself worked hard to bag your rich husband too y'know. I feel for her, I really do. The rich woman, that is.
Sablétine: Fine Pastries is a quaint little patisserie located on the outskirts of Uptown Waterloo, and I'm positive I wouldn't have found out about it if my stay-at-home-mom-sister (no, my mom isn't my sister - my sister is a mom who stays at home) hadn't told me, regardless of the fact that it's located in the same plaza where my mother pays a hefty sum to get our small dog shaved (almost to death). But, I'm glad she did. Why? Psshh. You. . . always asking, why? You know I'll tell you. Because Sablétine is the real deal. So real that you'd literally have to come right when the doors open so you can get a good grab on whatever it is they're making that day. And, contrarily, so real that you'd have to make a pretty penny to afford it. Say "monopoly" with me. For now, anyway. But hey, that's what makes for an awesome culinary adventure. I was pumped knowing it was like a race. No one would get to those doors before me - except for the old people that were there and comfortably seated, at 9:30 a.m., on a Saturday. And it had only opened for an half-hour so far. During the weekdays it opens even earlier. I would have been earlier, but I couldn't find my camera. Sirrah. Just be glad I got no one in my shots, or next to no one, the place was about as cramped as a Tokyo subway; but no one was forcing me to stay there - though they do serve coffee. On that note, I'll talk about the atmosphere. Hey, why not? But, I bet you can guess it anyway. A window sill, light coming in and washing over an open concept kitchen, a big stove, a pile of bagets, a disaply case with expensive pastries - delicious, expensive pastries. And the ever present smell of puff pastry and butter. Like I said, it's quaint. It's quaint, it's decadent, it's full of old women knocking elbows with young 24 year old men trying to blog about food. But how many times can I say quaint and decadent in this post? Enough to get the point across. It's a pleasant, though crowded space. And besides, you can't talk French - Parisian French, not Francophone French - without using those words at least 157 times. I did the math. It's so quaint, it's so decadent that the fresh baguettes they sell aren't even bagged. Oh no! They're wrapped delicately in napkin, comme en France. Yes, I was reminded of the stories of my mother who, with my father would go to the bakers early in the morning while on stays in France and get their bread the same way, and how by 9 o'clock at night my father would be hungry and irritated by the fact that nothing in France is opened after 9. But that was a long time ago.

I won't complain about the prices. Because I, like a well developed Philip K. Dick character, can accept the indifferent nature of reality and the injustice one may think it causes. But as I've mentioned before, this is a legitimate establishment, with someone trained in the art of pastry making, and they can therefore legitimately charge what they like. So use discretion before going into a place like this. I can tell you this, I bought two dessert pastries, two croissants, a cinnamon bread stick, and some puff pastry (like a croissant) all near 20 dollars. Those fresh out of the oven pastry like fineries come to near 2 dollars each, and the only thing that really warrants buying them is the propoganda you may get for yourself after shopping at the place, because they taste more or less like other pastries you can buy immediately in the grocery store. But, after all, it's the experience isn't it? And how could you blame someone who religiously gets up at 3 am to bake in order to make a living? Hmmm? I didn't think so. So accept it and move on. The desert pastries are another story. Ranging from 1.75 to around 5.00 dollars a piece + tax. And believe me, some of them are tiny. But goodness are they a riot to look at. I still haven't eaten them all.You can't feel bad about the price if the taste is there, just like you can't feel bad about the taste if the price is right (but I can). So then, let's approach this nice little hierarchy shall we? Starting with the everyday staples on the bottom.
Having dragged my mother along (my Italian one, not my Thai one), and being as good a son as I could be, I let her have her choice of whatever and report to me how it felt (in her mouth). She's fed me these past 24 years, I could at least do the same. We were both dazzled by the fact that the puff pastry had some kind of ganache filling in its centre. But that was about as dazzling as it got. For that anyway. My mom reported that the pastry itself was rather doughy, and that the ganache tasted like any other chocolate. I likened it to Nutella; that delicious hazelnut spread, absent from many of my young Italian childhood mornings. Alas, Sho ga nakatta. The croissants, like I said, didn't fall far from the puff pastry tree. But they didn't taste bad. They were good. But for two dollars a piece, they should have tasted better. What's more, a good observation on my mother's part, was that some of what came out of the oven looked a little too dark. We were lucky enough to have been given the golden ones in our paper bag. My mom made another good observation that could only be realized by someone who's lived and worked so long around food herself: that someone so young would be a little overwhelmed by the amount of business they do. So, some quality might be sacrificed. Especially in a city where a place like this hasn't existed before and everyone loves being - that's right, "decadent." I did like the cinnamon stick, sweet, flaky, yet held together by some immaculate, firm, moist, spongy dough. And as for the pastries I bought: one being near 3.00 dollars, the other near 5.00. Let me tell you. One was an eclair, like, a geniune, real french eclair; and I haven't had a good eclair in 5 solid years - actually, I haven't actually had a good eclair because I never tried one until now. This was no doughy, soft, chewy eclair; but, slender, glazed, with bite, and enough firm character to stand on its own. It was a sweet punch to my face. It made me want to shadow box. And what can I say about my near 5.00 coconut tart? Delicious. Not a tart at all, really. A delicate and mild custard enclosed by a strong crust that I can only liken to a shortbread, but with more body. I haven't eaten anything like it. And to top it off, a typical whipped cream, flavoured and topped with coconut. At least I know where the quality is going, which would make sense. Why any patissier would want to lose face is beyond me. I mean, croissants, puff pastries, baguettes: small potatoes, like a bowl of steamed rice, or decently cooked pasta. They're just everyday staples of culinary execution; the real test comes in the wok, the sauce, the dessert. Why else does ganache and panache sound so similar? Cyrano was French after all.
So, heed the warnings from this ghost of Valentine Present: sure, you COULD go to the grocery store and pay .25 cents per croissant, 1.25 per baguette, but where's the risk? Where's the excitement? Most of all, where's the adventure? What fun is food if you can't look, and work for it? So I say, bag a rich husband if you can, all for the sake of sweet Sablétine. Adieu, Adieu.

Sablétine Fine Pastries

203 King Street S.,
Waterloo, Ontario 
519.568.7373
http://www.sabletine.com/

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