Reviews

A friend from my running group kept sending me photos of the morning bake here, so I finally walked over on a rainy Saturday and put my name down for a table by the window before the rush started.

We ordered the seeded country loaf sandwich with the roasted pepper spread, which the person at the counter talked up more than it deserved. The bread itself is genuinely excellent, dense crumb, blistered crust, still faintly warm, but the filling was thin and under-seasoned, and at fourteen dollars I expected more than three slices of pepper and a smear of ricotta. My partner had the same reaction and we ended up splitting a second one just to feel full.

The cardamom bun was a different story entirely. It comes out laminated in a way you almost never see outside a proper pastry kitchen, sugared on top and pulling apart in long ribbons, and it is the reason I would tell anyone to make the trip across the bridge. Order two, because you will not want to share the first.

Service was warm and unhurried, and the person at the register remembered my order the second time I came in that week.

Would I go back? Absolutely, but for the pastry case and a flat white in the afternoon rather than for a full lunch.

I came in for a replacement washer for a leaking tap and left forty minutes later having also learned how to reseat the whole cartridge, which is the kind of trip that keeps me away from the big box store out on the highway.

The staff here will happily spend ten minutes on a two dollar part. They keep the odd sizes that nobody else stocks, they sharpen kitchen knives on Thursdays, and the woodstove enamelware in the back window is worth the visit on its own.

Prices run a little above what you would pay online, and I am fine with that.