Vanilla Bean Bakeshop Inc. — Restaurant in Maple Ridge

Tried their holiday tea service and the quality doesn't seem to reflect the price point of $50.00/pp. I'll break this down into what wasn't great, and how it could potentially improve as I do want to see this small business succeed.

FOOD The sandwiches that used sliced bread were a little dry. Fillings were okay, and you get a solid variety of five savoury items on your three-tiered platter. The weakest item was the stuffing bite--I'm pretty sure this was made with Stove Top stuffing (which is fine, it's a neat concept) but it was super dry. This needs something, like gravy or cranberry preserves, or a different binding agent to hold in more moisture (like a combination of egg and a fat, like butter).

Your second tier are the scones. No complaints here--they were fine but I'd recommend upgrading the whipped cream to a Devonshire or clotted cream. You get two of the same scone but I think you could switch out one plain scone for a variation, such as a flavoured scone.

The top tier was the dessert tier and there was a significant difference in quality between some of the desserts. The strongest was the macaron--definitely professionally made and packed with flavour, and the technical execution of it was perfect. The weakest dessert was the gingerbread cookie--very lacking in flavour and very dry, and a missed opportunity to elevate the visual appeal by using frosting or nonpareils to decorate it. The cupcake was also a bit disappointing--I expected a Swiss or Italian buttercream as the icing was fairly heavy (like an American buttercream).

The tea itself was perfect--loose leaf tea brewed in a pot. Big plus here; the quality itself for the cream Earl Grey was very good.

AMBIENCE This cafe is located in a mall with lots of free (!!) parking, but there's heavy emphasis on visuals and making things look good. It's appealing to walk into but the benches inside aren't comfortable.

SERVICE It was okay--pretty average for North America.

One thing to note was that when I made the initial booking, I did reach out about dietary restrictions--and the owner responded directly, which was quite nice. They can make reasonable accommodations for special dietary needs, which is nice.

SUMMARY At $50.00/pp, my initial expectation was that this was competing against other team rooms at a similar price point such as The Secret Garden in Kerrisdale, or Tsujiri in Richmond. It's not going to match those at the current food quality level, but I think that it can be improved on. Alternatively, you can offer a more reasonable price for the tea service itself (and taking that this is located in Maple Ridge) would be in the $35-40 range but no more than that, especially if you don't have immediate plans to change the recipes of your present food items.

However I do strongly recommend that food quality is improved upon as it seems that several shortcuts have been taken--dining out is expensive, and I think most people (especially Millennial customers who are starting to move eastward) expect the quality to be better than what they could potentially make at home. I think I would give this place another try if the food quality improves significantly to match the current...

I’ve changed my rating based on the request to delete my review.

“Reconsider” is a polite way of asking for removal, without asking. This owner is passive aggressive and her defensive long responses to multiple reviews highlight her personality. The owner deleted her original reply to this review and other aggressive responses after my comments to her about it. I had sent screenshots to my best friend of her snarky replies to people. They've since been edited.

I agree with another customer, “good reviews” tend to pop up immediately following a bad review. They appear to be solicited, some from people with new or no review history. 1 review is an entire response to mine from a “customer” who doesn’t even state they visited her shop. This is embarrassingly obvious.

Original: This bakery first came across my Facebook timeline and the cakes are undoubtedly beautiful. I began following their Instagram page and attempted to order a cake for my sons upcoming birthday. I emailed on a Thursday but hadn’t heard back by Saturday. I sent a follow up email and got a response that I took as a defensive excuse for not responding sooner. None the less, we proceeded with a quote. Certain flavours were listed as “premium” and I was sure not to choose those to keep the quote down. I was quoted $235 for an 8” cake and was stunned! I took my cake order to one of her competitors and was quoted $100 less by a more established bakery with a large following. I’ve chosen to go with them. I can not comment on the taste or quality of her items. That said, I can completely understand what others are referencing in their Google reviews with respect to her defensiveness. The $100 markup was a deal breaker. Her premium flavours were offered to me by this other baker at regular pricing so I chose one of those...

I've been visiting and supporting this local business almost weekly since a couple years ago and it's been a great experience until today. Something happened today that has thrown me off even though it's been hours since! I walked in, chose 5 stuffed cookies which are great btw, while I paid by card, the girl helping me started putting them in a box as usual and closed the box of cookies, checked the till then turned around and put the box on the coffee table behind her, but I had no coffee! In two years they've just handed me the box and off I go on my way out the door, so I wasn't sure what's happening. She turned around walked 2 steps towards the till again and just stood there looking at me. I thought there's something wrong with the payment, so I checked the screen again very confused at this point and annoyed why there's these looks and no words! So I asked "do you want me to walk passed you and go grab my box of cookies?" She said "yes"! I don't understand the passive service here. As if I was paying by cash, should I have walked behind the till to the table and put my cash on there and asked her to go get it from that table? Do we just not hand over things now? If something happened or someone dropped a box and now this is how they're doing it, then a few words and explanation would be nice or if I had coffee that I was to go there and put sugar or cream in before heading out then would also make sense to do this, but regardless the whole situation has thrown me off! I do not like to walk towards the back of the till table next to the kitchen entrance to pick up my box of goods when she could just hand it to me or put it next to the till on the table where a normal exchange would happen! Or at least Talk instead of standing there just looking at me! Such a bizarre...