Café Dulce
Green Tea Donut
Banana Bread Pudding
Blueberry Roti
Tapioca Chewy Roll
Heavily reviewed and highly regarded on Yelp despite luke-warm praise from palates I trust, a 9:00am stop at Café Dulce was largely a matter of convenience, the Little Tokyo bakery literally sitting only a few feet from my car parked outside Japanese Village Plaza Mall. Condensed in size with little seating or décor allowing plenty of space for a kitchen where a team of four baked it was unfortunately to a limited selection that I arrived and with the friendly young man at the counter explaining that items come out “only as they are fresh” I was informed that the greatest yield of product would not be found until 1:00, though the majority would be ready by ten or eleven, at the latest. Admittedly frustrated by any bakery that opens with racks half-full, but spotting some of Dulce’s signatures awaiting and still warm, it was eventually on a quartet that I settled and taking a one plate plus two bags to the lantern-decorated concourse the items I sampled were mostly impressive, only the greasy and flaccid donut leading me to wonder what others were tasting that I was not. Trying to focus on items not found elsewhere while remaining mindful of stomach space given breakfast at JiST and impending brunch at Faith & Flower it was following the donut that I sampled the fruit-filled roti and faring far better with bursting berries flooding the crisp pocket an equally impressive bite would be found in the soft and savory “chewy roll,” a seed studded affair that made me wonder why many restaurants don’t crib such a recipe for their basket of bread. At this point properly sated but unable to resist bread pudding in any form it was finally in a rewarmed round of banana soaked baguette that I partook and with a supple mouthfeel beneath a layer of bruleed bananas it was the least Asian option of the quartet that proved best – a strong impetus to return at some point in the future in order to sample the carrot cake, brick toast, tiramisu, and more.
RECOMMENDED: Bread Pudding, Tapioca Chewy Roll.
AVOID: The Green Tea Donut was a bit of a disaster in my opinion, the granulated sugar only serving to add a bit of texture to a donut that was oversaturated with oil surrounding runny cream.
TIP: As above, despite early opening hours Café Dulce is not the sort of place where bakers arrive hours before dawn to make sure everything is ready when they open the doors. Obviously a good way to assure fresh product, but at the same time a bit inconvenient to those on a schedule I’ve heard this is less a problem during the workweek, though at this point it is not something I can confirm.
