the bakery — Restaurant in Ghent

I genuinely have no idea why this place is so popular, it’s extremely overrated in my opinion.

Starting off with food, both pastries we took were super dry and dense so I cannot recommend in terms of flavor, it only looks pretty.

Second topic is price. They charge 1.5 euros for ice! You also have to pay extra 1 euro if you dine in - and I wouldn’t say that the atmosphere is worth it. They serve pastries on beautiful wooden boards, but you just seat in the middle of the street, without any coziness or comfort. The tables inside don’t look much more comfortable either, as the space is too tight.

Last stop is service. Service started off great—the cashier was friendly and helped me choose a pastry. But then she misheard me and packed it to go instead of for dine-in, which wasn’t a big deal for me plus I didn’t know what was typical for this bakery. I sat down, and when my friend started ordering to eat in, the staff realized the mistake. One of them came out, asked if I was staying, and mentioned there’s an extra charge for dining in. I offered to pay, but she said “I see your boyfriend is ordering inside, we’ll figure something out,” and left right away. Her tone felt passive aggressive and superior throughout the conversation, which made me uncomfortable, though that’s subjective.

What wasn’t subjective was the unprofessional handling. She assumed my gay friend was my boyfriend, didn’t explain anything to him (so he was unaware of the situation), and they just whispered in Dutch in front of him. Later they brought my pastry on a wooden board but never explained if I had to pay extra. When I asked, they just said, “Don’t worry, it’s figured out,” and left . We’re still not sure if my friend got charged double because they assumed we were a couple. But we will never know because the bill didn’t have a detailed breakdown of what we were charged for 😆

So the overall impression of the atmosphere is it looks fancy, but ‘fake’ - we didn’t enjoy the food and didn’t feel welcomed.

I thought for a second that maybe the reviews are so good because there’s no good competition, but after trying pastries at other places I must say that there’s wayy better...

Omg I finally found it! The most perfect, moist rye bread is sold here. 🤩Sorry I have no picture because we ate it quick. 🫣 adding a picture of the perfectly flaky vanilla cube at least. Also delicious. ⭐️

I was just passing by and the buttery smell attracted me to go inside and I do not regret my decision, there are so many delicious pastries and breads that it’s kind of difficult to choose only a few. In addition to that they sell jams, eggs and butter so you can fully stock up for a perfect breakfast at home.

There are a few places to sit but mostly the bakery is designed...

Me and my partner got the cinnamon roll pastries they were great, the service started great too. We said we were ordering take out but then changed our minds bc the weather was nice and just took a seat outside thinking nothing of it. Then the same lady that served us came out and told us we had to go and can’t sit there because there is an “inspector that might charge them a fee” I was just confused as to why she was telling us to leave after we had given them business. So we were asked to leave bc we didn’t say we were sitting down ?, weird...