Mimi's Cake Tour: August 2018

La Tana

Bakery: La Tana
Address: 3 Fan Tan Alley #101, Victoria BC
Website: http://latana.ca/
Style: Italian
Price: $$-$$$

Hey, I'm back in Victoria! Yes, I came with the purpose of exploring some of the bakeries I had missed out on the previous time. La Tana was one of them; the last time I was here, I'd come about an hour before closing and found the counter empty. This time, I came many hours before closing... and that counter was fairly empty, with all leftover items having been placed into one corner. Nevertheless, La Tana is a cute and cozy bakery located down in this semi-underground enclave off Fan Tan Alley and is known as a focacceria/panetteria: a place to get your savoury focaccia and rustic bread, of which they have a few varieties each. As such, they don't really have that many sweets nor is it their specialty. Or, at least there weren't that many sweets when I was there. Why do online photos show so much stuff? I was there before lunch!!! ;___;

Ahem, anyways, amid the limited selection, they had a cookie tray of Italian biscuits, one tart, and three different pastries available in quantities of one or two. The rush had beat me to it, obviously.... One of these items happened to be a cornetto, plain and bumbleberry.

Now, a bumbleberry cornetto ($2.99) sounded pretty good. Really good. I still remembered the last time I'd had a cornetto... quite fondly, in fact. Lightly sprinkled with powdered sugar, this one didn't have that croissant-like crunch when you bit into it and I didn't expect it to be that soft and dense. Cornetti, one must recall, are slightly different than their French counterparts, but I still feel like the dough could have been more complex in taste and texture. The filling was nice: super fruity in taste and appearance and real, none of that coloured pie gloop nonsense; it was the definite highlight of this pastry.

Rating: **1/2

Armstrong Bakery & Sandwich Shop

Bakery: Armstrong Bakery & Sandwich Shop
Address: 2565 Pleasant Valley Blvd, Armstrong BC
Website: n/a
Style: Canadian
Price: $

This was the second time attempting Armstrong Bakery; the first time I was here, it was supposed to be open, but wasn't. Really never like when that happens. Nevertheless, the second time was a charm and it was (finally) open. Yes, it felt a bit dead at the time and the selection in this smaller bakery wasn't the greatest, especially in comparison with the other bakery in town, but amid the loaves of bread and sandwiches, there were two disjointed display cases with sweets. I say disjointed, because I only really noticed the second one after having ordered something....

So, why don't we just get right into it? There is one gem in this little bakery otherwise serving some fairly standard bakery classics like danishes and squares: krämbullar. A little imagination and the name says it all, even to those unversed in Scandinavian baking; yup, it's a giant cream ball. Unfortunately for me, they either didn't bake any that day or had sold out, since the only ones available were day old stock. The lady sold it to me for $0.50... but really, I would have paid the $0.95 and gotten a fresh one. Still, even when day old, I bit into this fluffy, decadent creation and I knew I had made the right choice. Sure, this is like, 3000 calories, but vows of only eating half are in vain. You won't be able to resist that giant ball of yeast dough filled to the brim with whipped cream. Believe me. .____.

I mentioned that I was lured to the second display case only after having taken something from the first. This was an Eccles cake. I was travelling that evening, so my aim was to stock up on items that didn't necessarily need to be eaten the day of, and, such such, I chose to forego those aforementioned danishes and instead went for that Eccles cake ($1.29). In general, I like Eccles cakes. This had nice flaky dough with just the right amount of sugar sprinkled on top as well as filling. That filling, however, was a bit too homogeneous, a sort of indistinct mincemeat mush that could have used more spice and less raisins. I guess the cream is just too hard to beat....

Rating: ***

Cookhouse [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Cookhouse
Address: 4-chome 1-17 Kintetsu Osaka-Namba, Nanba, Chuo-ku, Osaka
Website: https://www.cookhouse.jp/
Style: Japanese
Price: $$

With a lot of Osaka's commercial development gravitating around its major train stations, many businesses -- including bakeries -- are located in the vast, insanely confusing network of underground shopping areas within and around these said train stations. This makes for some frustration, since it's really a pain to look for these underground bakeries (literally), but it makes for a pleasant surprise when walking through the train station as I was doing.

Cookhouse takes full advantage of Osaka's infuriating layout and has bakery locations splattered throughout the city; they have a whopping four in the Osaka-Nanba area in addition to a cute, animal-themed bakery that is also owned by them! That's a lot of cookhouse... One of these is a stall inside the Kintetsu Osaka-Namba station featuring the same kinds of baked goods I've seen in larger offshoots; this mostly includes a selection of Western-style sweet buns, sandwiched amid a more impressive array of more rustic bread and savoury buns. The sweets, I must say, look a little more generic and include red bean buns, chocolate and cream buns, a few resembling danishes, and those currently ubiquitous thick, fluffy pancakes. *rolls eyes* Though I was almost tempted to go for the little chick steam cakes! ^^

Well, it was no pancake for me. :D Instead, I took a perennial favourite: the cinnamon bun (162 yen with taxes). Unlike many cinnamon buns I encountered in Japan with either powdered sugar or a drizzle of icing, this was going in the all-out ooey gooey direction with its thick, almost impenetrable layer of icing on top and sticky and sweet cinnamon mass inside, though you really couldn't tell from looking at the outside. It had just the right amount of decadence. Fresh, fluffy dough, good cinnamon... maybe a little too much icing, but not bad for a bakery with three billion locations in Osaka. XP

Rating: ***

Kaslo Front Street Market

Bakery: Kaslo Front Street Market
Address: 411 Front St, Kaslo BC
Website: n/a
Style: Canadian, Supermarket
Price: $-$$

When a town doesn't have a proper bakery, Mimi's Cake Tour is compelled to get a little creative, especially when Kaslo deserves a blip on the map. Of course, Kaslo *is* already on the map, but well, there's never such a thing as too many places reviewed!

An online search will give you one bakery option in the small town of Kaslo: the Front Street Market, an independent grocery store -- the only one in town -- with its own small bakery section surprisingly featuring quite a bit of stuff like squares, pies, and a few shelves of self-serve baked goods like cinnamon buns, danishes and doughnuts. I'd read somewhere that they made some pretty good doughnuts; appearances seem to concur with this and so I was there for the doughnuts.

These doughnuts ($1.39 each) come in three or four basic varieties and most featured this thick, milky glaze and golden brown fried dough. Nice and crunchy on the outside, especially on the apple fritter. Good amount of filling on the jelly doughnut; plump, fluffy dough. There could have been a few more apples, but still, very tasty doughnuts from an unexpected source.

Rating: ***

Richlea Bakery

Bakery: Richlea Bakery
Address: 5166 48 Ave, Delta BC
Website: http://www.richleabakery.ca
Style: Canadian
Price: $$

Within walking distance of my other Delta bakery, Richlea is the second bakery in the little area of Ladner and seems to aim to be a healthier choice, at least so claim the signs, among other things. Stepping inside, I didn't necessarily find the tray of apple fritters and cronuts good for you, but they did look good. ;)

With pretty much all display cases devoted to sweets, there's a fairly large selection of doughnuts, cookies, full-sized pies, along with various squares and creamy delicacies. The specialty, owing to the various fruit flavours, seems to be their pies as well as their cronuts which resemble French toast... at least, maybe not really specialty, but they seem to really want you to get one. What they did seem to lack, at least in my opinion, was a less decadent selection of baked goods; things were a bit empty, so maybe I'd simply missed them? However, the 'assorted apple cake squares' ($4.25) proved to make up for that lack.

If not wanting to invest in a large pie, the apple cake, available in mini slabs that form ~2 pieces, turned out to be a great alternative. This is as classic and home-style as it gets: a simple coffee cake with moist dough loaded with sliced apples. On top, you have some more fruit (in my case, only the blueberry variety was left) and a streusel topping. Really, this one item that I wouldn't even guess had come from a bakery: not too sweet, stuffed with fruit, no-frills appearance, it seems like something that wouldn't be out of place coming straight from grandma's oven. ^^ And that, indeed, is a good thing.

Rating: ***

Mitsuhashi Panjyu Shop [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Mitsuhashi Panjyu Shop
Address: 5-3 Honmachi, Ise-shi, Mie Prefecture
Website: http://www.panjyu.com/
Style: Japanese
Price: $$

With the other bakery in Ise closed that day, I settled for this hodgepodge shop on the main business street leading up to one of the two Grand Shrines. Mitsuhashi is, as I mentioned, quite overwhelmingly random with a dozen signs outside advertising this and that along with an ice cream cone, chairs with no tables, and a bicycle with a bucket on the seat. Amidst all this chaos, I would call them a dessert shop (though they are also advertising they have Ise udon... really, they do everything here) specializing in ice cream and their creation: panjyu.

What are panjyu? This is a clever, punny fusion between traditional Japanese manju (sweet, stuffed rice cakes) and pan, the Japanese word that encompasses all European-style bread, predominantly sweet. Mitsuhashi makes them in a variety of traditional fillings, ranging from classics like red bean to seasonal sakura, and stuffs that into what is actually more like taiyaki (red bean fish) dough than anything resembling "pan". As such, it still tastes quintessentially Japanese.

Panjyu are sold individually or as coffee combos and are priced according to filling. FYI, it's more worth it if you grab the combo, since you can pick from more expensive panjyu at no additional cost. ;) I took three: one Ise tea (100 yen), one custard (80 yen), and one sakura (120 yen).

Biting in, I liked the soft, spongy dough; there was just enough of it to compliment the various fillings. In terms of those fillings... hands down, my favourite was the custard. It was lighter than the others and the custard was well done: not too thick or gloopy. Just the way I like it. The others, well, I wasn't a fan. Second place went to the Ise tea: intense flavour, dense and slightly grainy in texture, it had a hint of bitterness and was alright. The sakura was way too strong and floral; I had the impression I was eating incense and that's never fun. I also thought that the thickness of these two more traditional fillings didn't actually match the airy dough the way they would dense, hearty rice manju or mochi. Points for creativity, but not the best end product.

Rating: **

Old World Bakery

Bakery: Old World Bakery & Bistro
Address: 323 Nelson Ave, Nelson BC
Website: facebook
Style: Canadian
Price: $$

Old World Bakery is the only bakery in Nelson that's not in downtown. Not that that really matters, but it makes for a nice intro. ;) That being said, it's also the one that least resembles a bakery. With the pervading smell of eggs and fried potatoes, I would definitely say that the bistro takes precedence here -- as is the case for the vast majority of bakery bistros.

I'm always under the impression that 'the early bird catches the worm' when it comes to bakeries; at least, it's my excuse for whenever I show up in the afternoon and the bakery is empty. Well, I just had checked out and was at Old World for breakfast, hoping to pick up a nice, fresh baked good. I was disappointed to find that the entire area, even in terms of their bread, was quite empty except for three squares and a basket of day old items. O.o Were they still being baked? Did they hope to sell the day old stuff before bringing out today's baking? I was confused and, in some ways, frustrated, because there really was nothing to choose from. Gaaah, why was it so empty?

Never wanting to do a day old as my first review of a place, I went with one of three products available: the apple granola square ($2.99) -- that's my name and my estimated price. I have no clue what either actually was. Anyways, this looked like a nice breakfast treat with a healthier twist: nice granola bottom and an apple filling with good consistency. Quite good, homemade in taste as well, except maybe for the fact that both the dough layers were very oily and the crumble topping was soggy, a sure sign that it wasn't super fresh or it had been kept plastic-wrapped or something. More confusion at this baffling bakery and bistro.

Rating: **1/2

Delta Bakery

Bakery: Delta Bakery
Address: 4810 Delta St, Delta BC
Website: http://www.deltabakery.ca/
Style: Canadian, Danish
Price: $$

The start of a Cake Tour road trip! I like to do at least one epic trip in Canada every year and this time around, it was Vancouver Island's turn. Delta Bakery, of course, is not on Vancouver Island, but there's no better pit stop before pulling into the ferry terminal than a bakery. Or two. Not to mention it gave me the chance to flesh out my Metro Vancouver bakeries.

Delta Bakery is a long-standing institution and when I say long, I mean decades long. 6 decades long! Great job; you definitely have my respect and clearly, other people agree as well, since there was quite the line when I arrived. Many items were already sold out and the ones that were left behind, including a few doughnuts, shelves of squares and cookies, and trays of apple cake, looked very good. Classic Canadian baking at its best.

Wanting to keep additional bakery options open, I came in with the idea of buying just one thing. I came out with two. Yes, sometimes you can't stop yourself....

I started out with the Copenhagen square ($1.99): flaky, softer underneath and a bit chewy, with a generous custard filling and drizzled in icing. Very good, but I would have liked for the dough to have been more flaky and crunchy. Actually, I really liked the texture of that top spiral, but the bottom was a little too soft.

The apple fritters ($2.10) were perfect just the way they were: perfectly fried, great glaze and fluffy, delicately spiced inside. So good! Apple fritters -- well executed apple fritters -- really are wonderful things....

Rating: ***1/2

O2 Otobe [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: O2 Otobe
Address: Ichinomiya 1-7-32 1F, Ise-shi, Mie Prefecture
Website: http://www.shima-otobe.net
Style: Japanese
Price: $$

As with a great many Asian businesses, Japanese bakeries are very trend-oriented. One of these trends, if not the most ubiquitous, is the Baumkuchen: a Japanese take on the German "tree" cake. O2 Otobe's take incorporates the rocky coastline of its home region and turns that into a rustic, organic cake that's a bit more creative than the usual perfect circles. That being said, I was disappointed that you can't buy individual pieces of that Rias Coastline Baumkuchen and the smallest started at 1100 yen; at least, not when I was there as there are photos proving the contrary online. I hate when that happens. -__-

Another slight disappointment was that they didn't have all that much in terms of individual treats besides a few slices of more elaborate, creamy tortes and small packets of cookies.

It's always difficult to walk around with a cake slice and not get it smushed, so I finally settled for one of their cream puffs (108 yen). I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I ended up trying a few cream puffs on my journey and this was, by far, the best of the bunch. Stiff and airy choux dough with a hard outside and an almost hollow inside stuffed with plenty of rich, fluffy cream. Then, dusted with a pinch of powdered sugar. Delicious inside and out!

At this rate, it really was a shame I didn't get to try that hyped up baumkuchen!

Rating: ***1/2

Riviera Bakery

Bakery: Riviera Bakery
Address: 576 College St, Toronto ON
Website: https://www.rivierabakery.ca/
Style: Italian
Price: $$-$$$

Given that Italian bakeries are some of the more prominent European bakeries from coast to coast, I was hoping/expecting that Little Italy would be overflowing with them. :D Really, it's not... which is probably why I've never done that much touring in the area. Nonetheless, there is Riviera, and Riviera is without a doubt Little Italy's bakery institution. After all, it's been here for around 50 years -- you gotta know your cannoli after that long!

Stepping inside, you're greeted with a more compact bakery than the usual deli/hot food/display case Italian bakery, but that's definitely not a bad thing. It's cozier. The baked goods and breads are right there, centre stage. On a late weekend afternoon, I'll admit, there wasn't that much left, but those famous cannoli were still available along with all the classic Sicilian pastries. The only thing is that Italian bakeries are almost always very well-priced, but Riviera remains an exception: it's not cheap. In some ways, I would have liked to get more, but found that $3.50 for a cannolo was just too much, especially when paired with what I got.

Yes, the question was: should I try the cannoli? I was being drawn in that direction, but a big ball of dough kept getting in my way, calling my name. Asking what those weird balls were, I was told that they were Sicilian Inas(?): fried dough balls stuffed with ricotta. Apparently, they were super good. My choice had been made. The Inas it was ($5.00 each -- oh, by the way, given it is by far the priciest "individual" item on the shelf, it would be nice if it had a price!).

Cracking this massive thing open, I saw a hefty ricotta cream filling dotted with chocolate chips and with a hint of citrus stuffed inside a dense, bready dough. The kind you would associate with panettone. This was fried and rolled in a nutty crumble. Impeccably, almost unbreably rich, but very good. I really didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did: the fried, coated crust, that delicious cream filling... mmm, Riviera! 50 years has taught you well. :)

Rating: ***

L and L Bakery

Bakery: L&L Bakery
Address: 120-630 17th Street Castlegar, BC
Website: facebook
Style: Canadian
Price: $-$$

It took three attempts, but at last, Castlegar is on the Cake Tour map! Similarly, on the two previous attempts, I found L&L bakery closed. Having done some online research the last time around just to make sure Castlegar wouldn't elude me again, I found a bakery on this same plaza listed as permanently closed. Searching for bakeries doesn't get you anything about this place; it was only while driving along 17th st that I poked my head into the plaza and saw (yes!) the bakery had an open sign. So, while the other bakery I was trying out for the third time -- unlike L&L, they were always open but never had anything sweet, despite their website saying otherwise -- was a bust once for all, I left Castlegar with baked goods in tow. All's well that ends well.

Still, on a Saturday afternoon, L&L looked cleaned out. One of their specialties seems to be their doughnuts; at least, the empty trays, various signs with flavours, and profile photo point to this, but unfortunately for me, everything was gone except for three humble glazed doughnuts (there was another one in a different flavour, but the person in front of me ~~stole~~ grabbed it before I did). Besides doughnuts, they have quite a selection of classic bakery fare including several squares and home-style tarts.

But I wanted to try the doughnuts. So, I took two (around $2.20 in total; no prices are listed) of those glazed ones. The dough was soft and fluffy, just the texture I like, and the doughnuts were fresh and nicely sized. With glazed doughnuts, though, the highlight is the glaze and I found this one very thin; sometimes, you get a more runny glaze when they're glazed right away, but it did set properly. There was just too little of it. You didn't get that slight crackle of the glaze as you bite into it that I love so much.... They had the potential to be better.

Rating: **1/2

Tofuan Yamanaka [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Tofuan Yamanaka
Address:

One of more off the beaten/urban path destinations (at least for foreign tourists) on my trip was a little offshoot of Ise-city, around a series of historically recreated houses and streets known as Okage Yokocho. While the area was absolutely teeming with shops and restaurants, there is no actual bakery. However, being on the way to Ise Grand Shrine, it was a prime commercial temple street. And if you've already caught on, you know exactly what temple streets mean: tofu soft serve and soy milk doughnuts! I couldn't resist...