The Back Door Bakery & Cafe — Restaurant in Los Angeles

We have been loyal customers since Backdoor Bakery first opened. Half of their employees know my daughter by name and have watched her grow from a baby to a toddler. Today, their lack of kindness, understanding, empathy and basic human decency lost them this loyalty.

This morning, we went to order coffee. We’re normally greeted cordially, with smiles and “good morning”, but today, we weren’t. The male owner and young employee were there, but besides that, the cafe was empty. After allowing me to order and pay, the younger employee told us to wait outside because my 4 year old wasn’t wearing a mask. His exact words were, “You’ll need to wait outside because she isn’t wearing a mask.” He looked right at her when he said this. I told them she couldn’t (she is medically exempt), and he said we had to wait outside. I asked if he would bring my coffee out. He said he would, so we went outside. He cracked open the door to hand me my coffee. I told him, “just so you know, it’s illegal to discriminate against someone who medically cannot wear a mask,” And while he’s literally shutting the door in my face he says, “I understand but we offer ‘reasonable accommodations’”.

This was a complete 180 in their usual attitude - the coldness and rudeness was shocking. There was absolutely no empathy or human decency. This behavior is not okay, especially in front of a young child. A much more appropriate way to go about this would have been to ask me to come to the side and let me know their request without being loud and rude about it, staring at a small child and where my 4 year old could hear how she was being alienated and discriminated against. Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and empathy, and not scrutinized against and made to feel bad for something out of their control, especially right now when morale and mental health is where it is.

We will not be going back to this...

I visited Back Door Bakery before it burnt down and wasn't terribly pleased, so I tried again when they moved up the street to their new location which was formerly a Starbucks.

In the harshest and most truthful way I can describe it, Back Door Bakery is here to prey on your obsession with home-cooked, organic food, which comes with two inherent issues. The first is that you're paying top dollar for mediocre food. The prices there are horrendously large but you get the impression from their atmosphere and menu descriptions (and their direct verbal lies if you ask them about it) that the price is worth it because you're dining on some nebulous, exciting cuisine that is rare to find at the hands of people who have both a talent and a passion for making it. The problem there is, you're essentially getting diner quality food for a price too large to justify it, because it piggy-backs on trendiness and healthiness to impress you into opening your wallet.

The other inherent problem I mentioned though is that they're not only over-pricing mediocre food and forcing you to pay extra for a sense of self-worth, but they're also outright failing to deliver on the premise of the Back Door Bakery. At the risk of being too specific, I'll simply say I have a source on the inside who tells me the food they're using and the level of effort that goes into preparing it is lackluster. Let me put it to you this way - the owner's husband is on kitchen duty frequently and he isn't a trained chef.

If you're after diner quality food, just drive up Foothill a short ways to Sweet Cherry's Diner. You'll pay less and enjoy it more. If you absolutely crave the arrogant delight of organic, home-cooked food and don't care how much money you spend or how the food tastes, Back Door Bakery is your best bet until the Yellow Deli moves...

This place is good. I've been here a few times, and have enjoyed it. Their menu on the wall used to be extremely confusing, but I can see that they are really trying to improve that. It's much easier to read now. Although, they still have not updated the prices on the wall. So, you have to ask what the price is on pretty much everything. I also like that when you ask your pastries to be warmed they do warn you that they have an open-air oven, which may take 5 to 7 minutes. Otherwise, I would have worried why that was taking so long.

The pastries are very good. You can tell they spend a lot of time on their recipes and displaying them nicely. So far, my only real gripe would have to be with the ice-blended mocha I ordered. I got it with almond milk instead of whole milk, and the flavor was actually fantastic. The issue is with the consistency. It looked more like chocolate milk, instead of ice-blended. It was just a cold beverage that did not have any actual ice at all; as if someone just blended the ingredients with no ice. I know it's hard to tell in the photo, but it's just a really runny drink. The "roughness" on top is just bubbles, not ice. This happened to me the last time I ordered it a few months ago as well.

Once again, the flavor was really good, and overall I like this place a lot. I just think they need to make a few adjustments to really put it...