Demitasse Cafe & Garden Centre — Restaurant in Oak Bay

I live in a nearby neighborhood but lately on trips back from Willows beach I started stopping here for sweet treats. For about 6 months that's about all I did--until a friend and I grabbed some delicious to go salads before Xmas. This past week I wasn't feeling like sweets (must have been ill!) and I noticed while browsing a fellow sitting down and eating the most delicious looking large lunch. I just about leaped on it and dove in! So this week I deliberately made my way to Demitasse to get something interesting for dinner. And boy did I strike it lucky. I got this delicious homemade beef curry with a very interesting rice salad (with chunks of squash--unique and divine) and I couldn't believe the price for a huge take away meal. In a nutshell what I love about this place--and not necessarily in this order--the selection of quality take home meals, the fantastic garden centre with plants you don't see anywhere else, the delicious sweets, the small grocery selection AND the very nice and efficient staff. Also if you are vegetarian it;s really nice that they make it quite clear on the front display case which foods are likely to be vegetarian or meatless or gluten free. In other words you don't have t quizz the staff for hours--you can look and easily see what might work for a restrictive diet. What blows me away--and my sister owned a catering business similar to this--is the NUMBER of freshly prepared selections they have throughout the day. They don't seem to run out like alot of places do. Whole Foods could lesrn a hell of alot about how to run a take out department from these people! You got o Whole Foods in the early afternoon and their hot food case is ALWAYS nearly depleted with just some pathetic looking "paleo" carrots or other unappetizing concotion. What I love about Demitasse it is that it's clear to me that whoever is running the kitchen cares about the quality and taste of the food they are selling. The staff are always helpful and cheerful and they can be hugely busy. Just before I arrived about 30 people on bikes descended on that tiny little cafe and it was amazing how quickly they procssed all those orders. One of my biggest complaints about Victoria bakeries (especially Wildfire) is that you go in there and have to wait 10 minutes while they pour a cup of coffee and retrieve a dessert for someone. They just don't seem to care. Kudos to Demitasse for keeping up standards for many years. Not many food establishments...

I just want a front load this review with the caveat that has a plant-based human being I do not condone places that don't have a variet y plant-based options. That's a discretionary piece but I do want to comment on what is offered. Let's start off with the great. You're amongst plants and other lovely bubbling people drinking coffee in an environment that's inviting and hipster all at once which is not always an easy achievement.

There looks to be many different food options from savory to sweet. Some interesting things on the menu including fusion burgers and tofu squares and lasagna etc etc.

The item that I could eat or that were available for plant folk were salads, a tofu and a cupcake that was apparently chai informed. So I got the cupcake, which I always have my suspicions about anyways because it's a cupcake.

The unfortunate meeting of my expectations and the taste of the cupcake felt like a reminder to me about my former hesitations about cupcakes. It was sweet, it was tangy but beyond that no personality I don't think.

The coffee was okay but I still don't understand why it's impossible to put non-dairy milk on the customer side of things as opposed to on the server side of things. The large coffee was okay.

On top of the cupcake not tasting like anything exciting, it was pretty pricey for a small little guy sitting at the $6 range. I acknowledge, that things of quality during this day and age are expensive but having been to several other vegan establishments that use high quality ingredients, I was confused by...

Had a frustrating experience here.

I came here for the first time to pick up a few boxes of treats to bring to someone's house. I told them I wanted it in two separate boxes because I figured it would be too much for a usual bakery box.

Strangely enough, this bakery doesn't have bakery boxes. It has sandwich takeout containers which they use for takeout baked goods. Ordinarily I wouldn't care, but they're much smaller than bakery boxes and it resulted in my baked goods not being able to fit into two boxes.

No problem I said, just put it into another box. Instead, the gentleman gave it to me in this flimsy wax takeout bag. I was in a rush so I didn't make a fuss about it, but the end result was by the time I got to where I was going, I had discovered he had squished the croissants and butter tarts into one box (resulting in misshaped croissants and broken butter tarts), and broken cookies in the other. It looked like I was bringing my leftover food to someone's house, instead of fresh baked goods straight from the store.

The baked goods were tasty, the prices were okay, the staff were friendly enough. I'm just surprised for a bakery they aren't more prepared (or trained) for guests with larger...