Honey Bakery — Restaurant in Reno

*updated review below:

A very small storefront but everything here is lovely. My favorite snack from here is the lotus wrapped sticky rice, but they have nice egg custards as well. They are also the only place in town that serves fresh tarot root for their teas and Boba drinks, but they have the powdered stuff too if you have a sweet tooth. Get here early because they make a set number of buns a day and they WILL run out towards noon. I have yet to have a cake from here but I plan on it since it seems refreshingly different from the fondant covered cakes at run of the mill bakeries.

*UPDATE: I removed a star because I could not get the help I needed for the cakes. I really wanted to get a chestnut or mango mouse cake here but neither one were doable. I don't know what's going on with their signage but it was wrong and confused me, my mother and apparently the person helping us that day, who insisted I should come back when the cake maker was there instead. This itself isn't bad but I couldn't get an exact time, just vaguely "later." on the wall there was signage with numbered cake designs up to 20, but they didn't list the kind of cakes they were. I had gotten a pamphlet for their cakes before so I asked for one, and the woman said she didn't have any more until I pointed at a stack of them behind the counter. Looking at the pamphlet, the cake numbers and their designs didn't match the ones on the wall. Plus every time I said I wanted one of the designsand cake flavors on the pamphlet, she told me that the flavor doesn't come in that design. We'll then why do you have a fun, cute design listed under a chestnut cake if you don't decorate it that way and it only comes with chocolate mouse? Every cake design for both mango mousse and chestnut cake I was told was not the actual design and those designs were only chocolate mousse. This made for a very frustrating experience for me and I would not recommend getting a cake from here because it is entirely misleading if you advertise a design for a flavor and then do not do that design. I was very...

This review is more for the custom ordered cakes. Over the years, we have periodically ordered custom cakes for birthdays in our family. If you're not familiar, they are Chinese-style fresh fruit cakes: layers of eggy, bouncy chiffon cake filled with fresh cut fruit like strawberries or mango and copious whipped cream.

If you aren't a lover of western cakes with their denser, drier texture and (to me) overly sweet American buttercream, this is the cake for you. I do not consider myself a cake person, but I devour these.

In the Bay Area, Vancouver, Toronto, or Hong Kong, these types of cakes are easy to come by in any strip mall, but in Reno, Honey Bakery's your source. Call ahead to order these.

Thanks to Dennis for consistently delivering these wonderful cakes, especially in the "Chinese bakery desert" that is Reno. They are not inexpensive, but the work and quality of ingredients in them is evident. I never fail to get asked every time I serve them: "Oh my gosh, where did you get the cake??" I am happy to point them to Honey Bakery.

(Unfortunately it was so busy at our latest party, I forgot to get photos before we cut them, but I'll try to find a photo of one of these...

I've been on a great bun voyage thru California and Nevada. Without a doubt, this is the best place in the west for buns.

Honey Bakery never fails to deliver. Their buns are cheap, stupid delicious and fluffy and so amazingly consistent in qlty. The family that runs the place is nice. Concurrently, there's NO EXCESS PACKAGING. Instead of wasting time, energy and creating more trash by individually wrapping buns like every other Chinese bakery I've been to, Honey just tosses all your buns in a paper bag and let's you do the rest. I love it.

Anyways, I've been on a bun journey in 2021 and none of the other bakeries in socal, Vegas and beyond held up. Honey is...