The CakeRoom — Restaurant in Washington

Fantabulous! For my 60th birthday, I recently visited The CakeRoom to special order some desserts that I would bring to another restaurant. As I've since learned, they often have a few customers already there and one staff person to accommodate. If that's the case, just be a bit patient. It's well worth it and it's only a very short wait.

Ruth was there to assist me. She could not have done a better job. She's personable, friendly, helpful, forthcoming with a variety of fitting suggestions, and quick on her feet with additional ones as needed. And she's got a sense of humor.

I was ordering for two separately scheduled get-togethers. She asked if I was celebrating a milestone birthday, and I told her it was my 60th. She said, "THAT I was not expecting." And I think she even meant it ;-).

I described for Ruth a birthday cake from The CakeRoom that I recently had had -- unbeknownst to a birthday boy celebrant who had stored the box marked The CakeRoom in a shared refrigerator but who hadn't known that I had, er, helped myself to a sliver of a serving ;-). I loved it, but I didn't know exactly what it was. Her first two guesses turned out not to be what I attempted to describe. So I had to text the source of the dessert, tell him I had seen the dessert in the marked box, ask him in an ever-so-coyly-surreptitious way if he had liked it, and just "happen" to ask him what he had ordered, all the while not telling him I had sampled it uninvited.

All 60 preceding years, I swore I really didn't like cheesecake. Well, color me converted. The CakeRoom makes the most incredible chocolate cheesecake that non-cheesecake-lovers would love! It was definitely O.M.G.

I told Ruth of my dilemma and of my sheepishly but shamelessly texting the previous birthday boy celebrant to ask what the dessert was while I was in the shop. She smiled and didn't judge, well, at least not overtly ;-).

She made an absolutely terrific, different suggestion for my second night -- which said birthday attended and still wasn't the wiser ;-). It was individual fruit cobblers, perfectly sized, with peach, strawberry, and blueberry flavors. Fresh fruit from the farm either that day or the day before.

Absolutely delicious.

One friend, who attended, brought home some extra cobblers to his wife and two kids. They were unrelenting in insisting that he get the name and whereabouts of ... The CakeRoom.

Weeks later, I stopped back in and bought just a few more goodies for a good reason -- my palate. In the interim, I had shaved off my beard. Ruth immediately recognized me, and recalled my name. I can't help but wonder if she had put up on the backroom refrigerator a post-it note saying, "Warning! This man is not to be trusted near desserts not his. Goes by Dennis." She peaked, I just bet. (Not really.)

Yeah, I highly recommend the place!...

We ordered gender reveal cupcakes from this bakery, and they completely botched the one job they had. We bit into our cupcakes to find blue frosting and excitedly exclaimed “it’s a boy!”, which we sent in a video to our families. After celebrating the reveal, we checked our lab results, only to be shocked to find out our lab report is saying it’s a girl.

When we called the bakery to figure out what went wrong, they hung up on us. We called again, but they ignored our calls. We tried from a different number, and when they finally answered, they kept me on hold for 25 minutes, and eventually claimed they never received the email with the gender—even though we called the day before to confirm they had it, and they assured us they did. Even if they hadn’t received it, they had a 3 day lead time to contact me and let me know instead of choosing a color, simply hoping it was right.

They then put us on hold for another 30 minutes and hung up again! This is the most unprofessional behavior I’ve ever encountered. It was such an emotional rollercoaster for us. A simple apology or acknowledgment of their mistake would have gone a long way, but instead, they showed no care for their customers or accountability for their actions.

If you’re looking for a place to buy a gender reveal cake or cupcakes or any important milestone, stay far away from this bakery. Even though they advertise gender reveals as one of their known services, they’ve proven to be completely unreliable, unprofessional, and indifferent to their customers' special moments. Save yourself the stress and find a bakery that actually cares about getting it right.

Update: After an hour, they finally called us back to try and make things right, claiming the email with the gender went to their spam folder, which is why they didn’t see it. But again, we called the day before to verify they had received the email, and they confirmed they did. Even still, if they hadn’t seen the email, it doesn’t make sense to just choose blue filling. They claimed they did this “because that’s what they had on hand”. This response is not only unprofessional, it’s disrespectful to the fact that we chose to entrust this establishment with a very important milestone and they couldn’t care to pick up the phone to confirm the most critical detail. Eventually, they offered us a refund, but the damage had already been done. Stay away from this place. If I could give them zero stars I would.

Update - they never gave me the refund. I tried calling multiple times and just gave up after the third time that they didn’t pick up or make any effort to make sure it went through....

The CakeRoom is a quaint bakery in uptown D.C. serving, you guessed it, cake, cupcakes, cookies and brownies as well as coffee, tea and lattes. The building is small but they offer indoor seating upstairs in a hip atmosphere playing trendy lofi music. The service was friendly and attentive and the cake was good but nothing to call home about. It's always nice to be able to support small businesses like this so if you're in need of a sweet, try The CakeRoom!

My wife got the Cookie Butter Cake and I had the Nutella Cupcake. I honestly liked her slice of cake more than my cupcake haha the slices of cake are generous and are double layered. There is just the right amount of buttercream on their cakes and the cookie butter one has cookie butter drizzle and crumbs on the frosting. The cake is fine and wasn't amazing and I can see how people think it's dry and I would have liked it to be more moist but the eating it with the buttercream makes it perfectly fine. My cupcake was nice with a Nutella buttercream and chocolate drizzle on top with Nutella filled on the inside. There wasn't an excessive amount of frosting on the top which I appreciated and overall was good but not as good as the cookie butter one.

We sat upstairs to have our desserts and I like the seating area but there were cake boxes everywhere. They seem to be using the dining area as storage for their inventory which was a bit tacky as I don't really care to look at all that but I take it they're struggling with storage space with how little space they already have.

I'm not sure if we would come back here again but it was definitely a cute experience and a great place to come and have a sweet and coffee and do some work on your laptop.

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