La Farine — Restaurant in Oakland

I'm so glad the owners opened up this boulangerie on College Avenue. Wonderful breads and pastries, fresh coffee, and outstanding customer service take me across the Atlantic to the neighborhood cafes in Paris. Oaktown needs more stores like this. The owners live in Oakland, they have three shops in Oakland, they hire locals to work in their shops, they promote a "Buy Oakland" approach supporting other local businesses, and most importantly, they make good stuff! And it's consistently good, visit after visit...in fact my waistline will attest to it! These stores are neighborhood jewels, and I'm so glad...

First visit. Good selection of bread and pastry. Reasonable price. Good but a little short of excellent coffee. It did have excellent aftertaste though. Raspberry Walnut Scone was a bit dry but serving portion is good. Sour Rye Bread had well developed crust if not a tad too thick and hard. Otherwise it was tasty with great after taste while being nice meaty with good air pockets throughout. Having been a baker when I was younger, I could peak behind the serving counter and see that they know what they are doing and have a really good operation set up. Will modify the review once I've been here...

This place has the best morning buns ever and now they're opening earlier which is great I love this shop, my first visits things seemed a little shaky service wasn't that good but I think they understand that customer service is very important especially when you have a great product this product reminds me of cocola of Berkeley, who was founded by Alice madrich a real extraordinary product that was produced in the late seventies and in the '80s I really love that place by far the best chocolate pastries ever they eclairs were...