Swiss Pastry Shoppe.- Scotch Plains — Restaurant in Scotch Plains

Come here for their pastries but be prepared for the rude old lady. I pointed to their dinner rolls and asked if I can have one of that bread. She said, “that’s a dinner roll, not bread”. She repeated it again. And don’t bother asking if anything is freshly baked, she’ll respond that it’s made a year ago. She repeated it a few times also. She said that’s her answer for everyone. I left speechless with the dinner roll and pastries I bought while feeling bad because I asked nicely. If you’re tired of being asked that question, a suggestion would be to write the answer on a paper, tape it to your cash register, and point to it instead whenever you’re asked. I only asked because one time, I went on the day they were close and saw several bags of bread on the top shelf. And I might have bought more if it was recently baked is why I asked, like within the hour. To be fair, we get good service with the others, but the old lady is almost always grumpy. Where I grew up, you’re more likely to convince a customer to get some of anything if you offer and mention that it’s freshly baked and still warm.

We’ll still get our pies, donuts and rugelach here because they’re good, but I’ll probably ask my husband to get them for us to avoid...

The pastries are excellent, but the employee behind the counter yelled at me this morning that she was busy when I was trying to ask if she would be able to cut pastries into pieces for me. It was a simple yes-or-no question, but she wasted time telling me that she was busy. She then told me, finally, that yes she would, and how many pieces (or at least that's what I thought she said, I don't know what else she would have been asking), and I answered 4, and she said - very annoyed - no, only in half. The time it would take for her to just cut it into 4 pieces would have been less time than her telling me again how busy she was. I think this is my second interaction with the same employee - last time, I called to order a cake. It was the same thing where I was asking questions about the types of cake available, and when I would be able to pick it up, and she just kept cutting me off and telling me that she was very busy and that I should just tell her what I wanted. I needed to know the options before I could tell her what I wanted! We liked their cake, but the experience left me feeling annoyed, and this morning made me start my day angry. I just told her this morning that I hope her day...

This less a review than a confession. It's two weeks before Christmas - in the COVID era - and Swiss Pastry is hopping.

I got my usual raisin buns and pecan danish - tasty, fresh, and moist. (We don't get over here often.)

The stars of the show were the seasonal goodies. The "plain" stollen is graced with plenty of fruit, sufficient butter (?) to keep it moist and rich, nice spicing including mace, etc. The sugar sprinkles on the surface was perhaps too generous, but flavored well with vanilla. Nice touch. There's also a marzipan Stollen that I didn't get.

I added some rugelach, choosing the raspberry, but there were easily six other options! If you aren't familiar with them, they're a real treat. These are the best I've ever had. One piece - delicious - with coffee is very satisfying. We're set for season.

It's worth pointing out that this visit wasn't cheap, it WAS good value. We don't have many artisan bakeries any more. We'll be back to...