EuroMax

Bakery: EuroMax Foods
Address: 2550 Hurontario St, Mississauga ON (two other locations)
Website: http://www.euromaxfoods.com/
Style: Polish, "European"
Price: $$-$$$

I was sharing my confusion in regards to Euromax in my Karpaty post several months ago and I still don't get it. Are they the same? Are they different? Disregarding the name change (partial name change -- the sign has both names on it still ????), I see nothing else to differentiate the two. The cashiers even wear, albeit faded (my mom was laughing at this while there), Karpaty T-shirts. More confusing is that everything there is the same as in my previous post, although perhaps fresher and of a wider selection. On top of this, Euromax decided to add onto their cake and baked good selections, items looking *very* Portuguese and *frowns* unneeded muffins and brownies. What's that doing there? Honestly, there are more than enough stores where you can buy muffins, I don't expect (nor do I want) to buy muffins from a Polish deli. Come on, guys! Fill it up with some gooood stuff! ;)

Of course, the first thing I ran to was the poppy seed bun ($1.79) which is the same as Karpaty up on Bristol (did a review and photo for that already), but since it also happens to be one of my Polish-style faves, I couldn't resist. I feared that these would only be available at Karpaty, seeing as this place is all new and all. -_- I guess not. Various other danishes and poppy seed buns are available, but I love this one! And, most likely to the high amount of traffic (the place was packed when we went, Thursday afternoon), it was fresher too. Yummm...

On top of that, we decided to risk getting a cake this time and settled on the delicious looking plum cake ($17.99/kg ; we paid around $6 for a smallish piece) which I'm still trying to figure out if it's from Sweet Temptations, as I just bought a slice at Starsky from there of plum cake... for $3/kg less, and the two look similar. I don't remember now if they tasted similar. Still, Sweet Temptations, a commercial Polish bakery (they should open a factory outlet, they really should *-*) baking for the GTA from their place a couple blocks from Euromax. Nonetheless, it's the season for local plums and plum cakes are a favourite sight at delis and bakeries. I love plum cakes. This one had a yeast-dough on the bottom, topped with slices of prune plums and then a tooon of delicious crumble. The taste was amazing, although I was a little disappointed that for how much we paid for it (btw, $3/kg more at Starsky will get you Granowska's delicacies ^^), they treated as though it were reduced: we got the end of the cake and the very lopsided, almost triangular chunk looked horrible. If, say, you were buying it to serve to guests, it was impossible to cut even two nice slices from it. They don't bake it and aren't responsible for the taste, but they should at least take some pride in what they're selling and make it look decent. Cutting a relatively equal slice isn't asking for too much, I think.

General verdict: besides the Portuguese baked goods and those muffins, brownies and carrot cake which I wouldn't think of buying (I can buy the former at an actual Portuguese bakery and the others at a bakery more specializing in this kind of baking), Euromax offers an assortment of tasty-looking baked goods and cakes, although their selection isn't that much bigger than Karpaty to account for the "upgrade" or any different, so I can't exactly say it felt like I was trying something new. Still, they've got those poppy seed buns, but I would stick to buying by weight items elsewhere, since they're quite expensive here. And... I still don't get it. ;DDDDD

Rating: ***

[photo courtesy of Euromax/Karpaty... I drove off without making my own :P]