Qualita [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Qualita (クアリタ)
Address: 16 Chome-1 242 Minami 1 Jonishi, Chuo Ward, Sapporo, Hokkaido
Website: https://sapporo-qualita.com
Style: Japanese
Price: $$ 

This takes the award for the worst bakery experience on my Hokkaido trip.

Qualita is located on the ground floor of an apartment building and is pretty easy to miss. Upon passing through the automatic door, there's barely enough room for three people and you're immediately greeted with the small selection of mostly rustic loaves of bread and savoury options. You really come to appreciate the typical tray-and-tong bakery system in most Asian bakeries when you step into a tiny space like this bakery and are faced with a small counter of baked goods, behind which you have two otherwise unoccupied workers smiling awkwardly at you while you try and decipher all the labels.... Online reviews mention the presence of danishes, but the only thing resembling danishes were the plain croissants. Besides that and a red bean bun, I had a very hard time finding anything sweet. After the fact, I see their website didn't really have all that much besides those aforementioned danishes. As such, Qualita is not the place to go for sweet baked goods. But being the only customers with two workers eagerly awaiting my order, I felt bad walking out and didn't know enough Japanese to ask which were sweet.

So I quickly read "cream" and asked for that one, located right next to the croissants. The worker announced "cream cheese pan" (194 yen) to the one at the cash and I immediately had misgivings. That was my fault though, I'll admit that. Well, sweet it was not, though it had the potential to be. Instead, it was the world's chewiest bread. The crust of the bun was simply unmanageable. I tore, I chewed, I chewed some more. I don't even understand how it could be so tough. Inside, there was simply a giant wad of cream cheese, probably enough for you to generously spread onto three bagels. It was so thick and sticky and yet it wouldn't stick to the dough around it, but remained as one big chunk of cheese. Oh, there was also a giant piece of butter attached to one end of the cream cheese ball. Three components with zero compatibility with each other. Total failure.

Rating: *

Loonie Bin & Bakery

Bakery: Princeton's Loonie Bin & Bakery
Address: 248 Bridge St, Princeton, BC 
Website: n/a 
Style: Canadian 
Price: $

Ah, I am such a sucker for puns and "loonie bin" for a dollar store is pure genius. In terms of store combinations, I'm not sure if the first thing that comes to mind is a dollar store and bakery, but with the dedicated in town already closed (before 3!?), I had to take a look.

The Loonie Bin is your standard independent dollar store with a bunch of random stuff that doesn't exactly cost a dollar anymore. It even smells like a dollar store. So, it is a little weird and exciting to turn the corner and find a display case featuring a small selection of baked goods. Everyone online seems to be raving about the fresh doughnuts, but there were none at all in sight. Actually, the shelves looked a bit... barren. Where were the doughnuts when I'm in town? -___-

Amid those empty shelves, there were sausage rolls, some sort of cake, as well as turnover and pastry sticks. After having read those aforementioned online reviews about fresh doughnuts and homemade baked goods, I was genuinely disappointed, especially since the latter two had an undeniably commercial look to them. Kind of like they'd been bought at Superstore as a pack, had been opened and were being sold individually. That fruity filling, that sugar-encrusted puffy dough... in all my bakery visits, I hadn't seen baked goods from a bakery looking so mass-produced in a very long time. I was getting really suspicious....

But it's not a review without the goods. That good was the raspberry stick ($1.50 each). Biting into it brought back memories of grabbing supermarket baked goods as a kid: it featured that typical, not-too flavourful pastry dough with the sugar on top. The notches in the dough were a little too evenly spaced and the two together were a little too identical. The raspberry filling was gloopy, not fruity and the presence of cream cheese (no, please, not cream cheese!) seemed to seal the deal for me. I'd love to give any small-town, local business the benefit of the doubt, but there didn't seem to be any "homemade baked goods" here.

Rating: *

Sweet Bakery

Bakery: Sweet Bakery & Coffee House
Address: 2445 Broad St, Regina SK
Website: http://www.sweetbakeryandcoffeehouseregina.com/
Style: Canadian 
Price: $$$$ 

At the beginning of August, I embarked on a road trip from Toronto to Kelowna. Five provinces. Six days. Sure, the main purpose wasn't to go cake touring, but it was certainly a top priority, especially considering that I am still aiming for 150 bakeries from all over the country! Here are the results.

Rounding out my Saskatchewan tour this time around is Sweet Bakery. Well, I suppose I forgot to do this chronologically and had to go back, but nevertheless, I spent one night in Regina and thought it a travesty if I didn't have any Cake Tours from the city. This proved more difficult than you'd think. There really aren't that many bakeries for a city of Regina's size and they seem scattered about; none, suffice to say, were really on the way. Except, that is, for Sweet Bakery, which was located a few blocks away from where I was staying and it was more or less on the way back to the highway.

Despite the name online, it's known as Sweet Coffee on location and that is certainly more appropriate. It really isn't in any way a proper bakery in the sense that the focus is the drinks and prepared light meals or sweets to accompany those drinks. They really don't have that much in terms of selection; no bread, that's for sure, and baked goods are more or less variants of the same item (cookies, cheesecake, and coffee cake). Moreover, these baked goods were expensive! I simply did not think anything was worth the price.

I confess I was ready to walk out when the idea of not doing a bakery in Regina loomed darkly over my head and I caved, going for the cheapest item: a cookie. I picked the ginger cookie ($2.55). I love ginger cookies; I could eat them all day, every day. People often get them wrong, yes, and I don't often stumble upon a good chewy, gingery cookie. Most of the time, they're too sandy, even though they have enough of that ginger zing. These, on the other hand, were brittle and hard. The size and thickness made them nearly impossible to break or bite apart and they didn't smell like ginger, nor taste like it. I hardly ever get nasty on my reviews, even when I don't particularly like it, but I was really... unsatisfied and disappointed with this place.

Rating: *

New Town Bakery

Bakery: New Town Bakery & Restaurant
Address: 148 E Pender St, Vancouver BC (+2 locations)
Website: http://newtownbakery.ca/
Style: Chinese, Filipino 
Price: $$$ 

Somewhat in the area, I thought of popping into a few Chinese bakeries while in Vancouver's Chinatown to increase my bakery count without spending a lot of money. ^^; Chinese bakeries may not be the greatest, but they are good for cheap eats. New Town, like some bakeries, is a bakery at the front and a restaurant serving "fast food" in the back of the space. The first thing that struck me was the full-serve counter with numbers, crowds fighting for those numbers, and signs warning of pickpockets -- certainly not the best atmosphere. :/ The selection is larger than usual, though this is mostly limited to savoury goods; after all, their specialty is meat-stuffed steam buns. There was also an increased variety of coconut and pineapple buns, along with different types of fried dough, both sweet and savoury, but little in terms of more traditional, "non-bun" baked goods.

Having already bought a coconut bun elsewhere, I thought I'd try one of their "fritters"; these are generally well executed. From bakeries to supermarkets to restaurants, they're usually nice and crisp on the outside, fluffy and soft on the inside. I've tried "ox tongue" and "oil strip" varieties elsewhere, so I was intrigued by their "Chinese cinnamon fritters" or "sweet cinnamon fritter" (something along those lines) -- the tray was almost empty, so they seemed to be a popular choice.

At $1.75 + tax (plus tax... what? when was the last time that happened!?), they ended up being pricier than I expected and were definitely not worth it (I also didn't appreciate the nasty look and annoyed attitude I got for buying one item...). In short: worst bakery of my BC Cake Tour, and quite possibly the worst Chinese bakery I've ever tried. :( This fritter was dense and stale; the outside was too brown and badly fried, with all the old oil, which tasted of salt and pepper pork chops, soaked up by the dough instead of creating a nice crisp outside. And where was the cinnamon? O.O This was super salty, and just plain... gross. I don't know how I managed to eat this! Cheap treat failure. ;_____;

Rating: *

Café Mimi

Bakery: Café Mimi
Address: 3970 Rue Saint-Denis, Montréal QC 

Website: http://www.cafemimi.ca/

Style: Balkan, Serbian, Croatian 

Price: $$

I have been waiting for this moment! To review a bakery called Mimi can always been a dream of mine, and I once found one (strangely enough it was a Serbian deli and this Mimi, if not Serbian, comes from the same geographic region), but upon entering realized there was nothing sweet there. The second time I decided to give it another try, it was closed down. Since then, I've vowed to pounce on a Mimi and at last I got one: Café-Patisserie Mimi in Montreal, specializing in Eastern European hot food, baked goods, and imported products. 

Having checked their website prior to popping in, I was greeted with photos of flaky baked goods, both sweet and savoury, trays of baklava and pastries. Getting excited, I found the real-life selection not as amazing: in terms of flaky, savoury bureks were the only things there. There was no sign of the other baked goods shown online. The baklava and some pastries were there, though there wasn't as much selection as I've seen elsewhere. In addition to these, there were squares, with either sour cherry or apple.

I took a slice of sour cherry cake ($2.00), a simple square cake with two layers of dough and a sour cherry "filling" in the middle. The premise sounded good and I've had this style of cake from other places with great success, but this turned into my most disappointing Cake Tour of this Montreal trip. This was so stale. The cherry filling had hardened and wasn't really a filling at all, but a few pieces of cherry; the dough crumbled upon contact. It had taken on the mixed flavours of the fridge and everything that had been in it, both sweet and savoury. This was not in any way an enjoyable experience -- I was devastated. Mimi! How could you do this to me!?! ;__; 

Rating: *

Pekárna Karlštejn [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery:  Pekárna Karlštejn
Address: Královodvorská 15, Prague 
Website: n/a
Style: Czech, Chimney Cakes
Price: $$$$ 

Before I went to Prague, I kept hearing about how you have to have a chimney cake, so I couldn't wait to try one. Instead of going somewhere for lunch, I went to this place for the "traditional" chimney cake with ice cream and wish I got a sausage someplace else; not only did I not feel too good after this, this was a tourist trap and I felt ripped off -- no wonder all the signs were in English. Not to mention it definitely wasn't worth 90kč!

I was surprised that this chimney cake was like a piece of stale bread with a hard crust all around, stuffed with flavourless ice cream. Feeling very thirsty, I could barely eat it, because it was so dry. Personally, I would have preferred just a regular waffle cone. I can say the only thing I did like was that there was a chocolate rum ball at the bottom of the cone. This was definitely not worth sacrificing my lunch for; I don't think I'll have a chimney cake again....

Rating: *  

Grains de Folie [RIP]

Bakery: Boulangerie Grains de Folie 
Address: 140 Boulevard Saint-Benoit O, Amqui QC
Website: http://www.lacaptive.ca/ 
Style: French
Price: $-$$ 

Continuing with this mini-series on weird bakery combinations in Amqui, there is Grains de Folie, an artisan bakery that operates at the back of a microbrewery and bar. This back area is also part-gourmet shop with local cheeses and products. Yes. What is even more perplexing is that the microbrewery website above doesn't mention the bakery at all, but instead says that they now have bread from La Mie Véritable, in Carleton. So, does the bakery still exist? I'm not sure. Maybe it's not actually connected to the microbrewery, and yet the workers are the same and you pay at the bar.... I am so very confused!

Either way, this was the most disappointing cake tour on this road trip. It seems a little mean saying it outright, but for there to be top picks, some must fall to the bottom. :( For one, there was nothing here. The places reserved for breads and baked goods, all labelled and priced, were empty. While there, a woman came in asking if they had a particular kind of bread. They promptly answered her that they were out of all kinds of bread; they were closing in three or four hours. The baked goods, though the selection was quite small to begin with, were not faring any better. One croissant and the item I purchased was the only thing there. Both were wrapped and sealed in a plastic bag on the counter -- was this day-old stuff? Or was it just what was left from that day?

Nonetheless, I took the pastry with cream (I'm afraid I forgot the name) listed for $1.75. I paid $1.00, including taxes, so some discount was in effect. The pastry was quite small, and certainly indicative of the price. Ripping that bag open, it either wasn't from that day or had been put immediately in a bag so that any crispiness typical of French dough had turned soggy. It contained a very small amount of cream, pretty much limited to a thin layer spread on the bottom layer of dough. This would have still been alright if it weren't for one glaring fault: the bottom was burnt. Burnt as in black. :/ And even after peeling away layers of dough, the whole thing tasted burnt. I don't even remember if I ate the whole thing and that doesn't happen often (believe me ^^;). On a fairly strong tour, this was a super disappointing stop!

Rating: *

Polcan

Bakery(?): Polcan Meat and Deli
Address: 3115 Winston Churchill Blvd, Mississauga ON (second location on Dundas St W)
Website: N/A
Style: Polish
Price: $$

Polcan isn't a bakery, but rather mostly a meat shop with homemade sausages and cold cuts as well as a butcher shop with mostly beef and pork. The deli receives their small selection of baked goods from a more commercial Polish bakery (such as Sweet Temptations, Karlik or Double W, for example); I'm extremely curious which one it is, since I'd aim this review at them. Previously, (that is, before Starsky supermarket existed) they had a small, though fresh (with nearly daily shipments) selection of baked products such as cheese, fruit or poppy seed buns or pączki and a few, rather expensive slabs of cheesecakes or more tort-like goodies. Now, with Starsky there, Polcan focuses mainly on the meat part of their deli with the rest, in particular the bakery section, having gone downhill (and yes, the worst part is that it isn't their fault). I think that Polcan did get shipments from Sweet Temptations beforehand, and I went for their poppy seed buns, as it was the only place in this half of the city (the only other place that I knew of was Highland Farms and, occasionally, Karpaty) that had them. I don't know who supplies Polcan with their goods and if it's the same place, but they should uh, reconsider their supplier. Or maybe not have a bakery section at all?

While going for some meat, my mom picked me up a poppy seed bun (something around $1.80; she can't remember for sure) for the sake of the Cake Tour and: worst poppy seed bun ever. :( It was something new, so I was pretty excited to give it a try, but the experience actually managed to beat that of Pusateri's poppy seed bun, which, although old, had an incredibly promising taste. There were two things that didn't work out for this thing: the taste and the freshness. For one, it was purchased from the store almost completely solidified. The dough was very stale and that good old microwave refresher trick failed to work. Secondly, it just wasn't good. The bun, unlike other Polish ones, quite literally was 'what you see is what you get': the poppy seed on top was all the poppy seed you got. Polish poppy seed buns mostly use the same mass, which you can buy (from Starsky) imported from Poland in cans, but this was curiously a bit of mashed poppy seeds, with not too much taste, expertly folded so that it all showed up on top. This was really as skimpy as you can get. Perhaps with more of a mass or more poppy seeds in general, the whole thing could have lasted longer or remained sliiiightly more moist. However, seeing as a huge chunk (see above, with the crack in it) of the bun had no poppy seeds, it was just... like a dried bread end. :/ It's not like it was $0.75 or something that you're cutting corners to make it cheap: it wasn't cheap and yet was very cheap, even with the icing. Huge disappointment!

Rating: *