Passion Bakery Cafe — Restaurant in Kauai

The passion Bakery Café is a cute cheerful bakery with a good selection of pastries, drinks, and meals. Friendly staff, free WiFi (but slow), and both indoor and outdoor seating (handy for the changeable Kauai weather). The Tofu scramble with toast ($10) was very tasty. Rather than a traditional scrambled up tofu it consisted of chunks of tofu very nicely cooked with various veggies (eggplant, tomatoes, mushrooms, asparagus) with a good helping of garlic. It was very flavorsome and healthy, not oily, and I think they veggies were very high quality (and they clearly didn’t just choose cheaper veggies to save money). It was on the lighter side but the toast helped to fill me up, and food on Kauai is expensive of course so I think it was a pretty good deal. Their toast was completely delicious – it was a roll, almost like a brioche that had been lightly toasted – I see that they make taro brioche rolls, so I think that’s what it was. I noticed that they sell loaves of sliced bread (organic whole wheat oat bread) so I’ll be back for one rather than buying a loaf imported from the mainland. I had a Kauai coffee ($3.45 for a large and then $1.85 for a refill – yes, I had too much coffee) which was good – not as good as Kona or Ka’u, but it had good body and very little bitterness. Their croisscones (croissant meets scone! It appears to be their invention) and especially their muffins also looked great, so I tried a guava muffin ($3.99), which was very well baked - light and yet substantial since it’s filled with cream cheese.

For social and environmental impact, I’m giving them 4/5 green stars. They bake with organic flour and favor local ingredients (important for a remote island!) like lilikoi, pineapple, taro and herbs from their own garden. Their drip coffee is from Kauai Coffee, their espresso drinks are made with Illy coffee, and organic honey is provided. Kauai coffee has a somewhat mixed record (too much history to go into here) – they use drip irrigation that reduces their fertilizer and herbicide use, but questions have been raised over how sustainable they really are, and they’ve also had a court case over civil rights of Thai migrant workers. It looks like the Passion Bakery is most of the way there in terms of waste – they had paper cups from World Centric but lids that weren’t compostable; food is served on recycled paper plates but with a plastic fork; plastic cups are compostable (Greenware). Especially in places like Hawaii I think it’s important to minimize plastic waste - I was horrified to see coffee for sale in Styrofoam cups at a...

TL;DR - Great malasadas, confusing and abrasive customer service.

Was very excited to make a quick stop for some malasadas, and seemed to get there on the later side (around 11). There were only a couple people in front of us, and we didn't see any malasadas in the case or on the TV menus, so we thought we were just out of luck and figured we'd get some other baked goods. I asked the older woman working at the register if they did still have malasadas, and she very shortly asked if we wanted sugar or cinnamon, then disappeared into the back to get the 2 sugar and 2 cinnamons that we requested. Upon walking up closer to the counter, after the other customers had cleared it, we saw that there was actually a printed malasada menu sitting on the pastry counter, with all of the fillings also listed. Disappointed that we weren't offered these options, we asked if it'd be possible to get the ones we ordered filled. She seemed extremely put out by this request and acted like it was a huge inconvenience, so I only asked that we get two filled. She walked to the back and said "Just two, right?" and I said yes. She then returned with a smaller box and rang us up. After we stepped outside, my fiancé said "I think she just gave us the two filled ones", which did turn out to be the case. The whole interaction was very uncomfortable and confusing - thankfully the malasadas we did get were delicious. I see in other reviews that that worker has received complaints before, and I hope that management will ask her to communicate better...

Want to taste heaven? Eat a Lilikoi Malasada. And then eat another one. And then try a mango malasada. Oh. My. Lord. These things are no joke. The lilikoi flavor is to die for, as is the mango, to the point where to me, every other flavor pales in comparison. Do I like the coconut one? Sure. The vanilla? Sure. But you can get vanilla anywhere. Lilikoi? Not so much. And do you want to take a snack with you? Something that won’t ooze on your hands? Ok, well I’m back to the original flavors again: because holy cow, their lilikoi and mango shortbread cookies are so delicious, that it’s hard to decide whether to eat a cookie or a malasada. These cookies are tangy, beautiful, not too sweet, and melt in your mouth like something created in heaven would. They are INCREDIBLE. I don’t know why more people don’t mention them here. Have you gathered yet that I love this place? Well, you’re right. Eating these delicious morsels literally makes my day. If I won the lottery, I would order enough so that I could have 2 or 3 malasadas a day, and 1 or 2 shortbread cookies. Yes. Every day. Screw the extra 10 pounds. I don’t care.

Lastly, I appreciate that the owner responds to reviews. And I found the staff to be mostly friendly, but all of the reviews mentioning rudeness are concerning. I hope the staff are back to being happy, because I don’t want to lose this place! That would be...