Simma's Bakery — Restaurant in Wauwatosa

The dog ate the wedding cake!!!

This past weekend was my brother-in-law’s wedding. For some reason, we had the cake that my wife’s aunt made at our house the night before the wedding and were responsible for its care and transport to the reception venue (why…?). The night of the rehearsal, I had decided to bite the bullet and take my 1-year old daughter home so my wife could enjoy the rehearsal dinner without worrying about her. When I got home, I let the dog out of her cage and walked upstairs for bedtime stories. Finally getting my daughter to sleep, I went down to make dinner, watch some tv, etc… After about 30 minutes, I noticed my dog was acting a little guilty about something. I thought maybe she had an accident or something so I did a quick spin around and didn’t notice anything. Then I looked at the table… Where there was a ravaged wedding cake top and cake crumbles everywhere. I felt like the camera of life zoomed in on my realization of what happened… Terrified and furious, I put/threw my dog into her cage, and did what any 35 year-old American male would do, alone, in a cake related emergency… “Call Mom!”…

It took a few minutes to get my mother to stop laughing at my cliché wedding-movie problem… Wiping the tears from her eyes she told me she would call back in a few minutes. Within 15 minutes, I was texting the on-call Simmas bakery owner who was available using the “Wedding Cake Emergency Hotline” (yeah… I didn’t know that was a thing either). I gave him the specs of the cake-top using my tape measure and some pictures and he said they will get on it in the morning.

First thing the next day, the baker let me know the cake was ready. It was perfect. Texture, buttercream frosting, size, everything. As a note, Simmas did not make the original cake, their team is just extremely talented and worked ridiculously fast for some random guy whose 40-pound golden doodle got courageous. When I asked how much it was… The owner WAIVED THE FEE ENTIRELY!!! And said, just take a picture of the reaction (which I wasn’t present for sadly).

Just to clarify, my family has been going to Simmas for years because their cakes are amazing. The owner didn’t know who I was, but still saved a crucial part of a wedding. I always knew this bakery made amazing pastries and cakes, but now I know it’s run by a generous and wonderful team. I come from a very big family, and Simmas will be my, and more importantly my mom’s, grandma to 19 hungry children, go to bakery whenever the occasion calls. Thank you, Mark, Meredith, and the entire Simmas Family for saving the day!!!

PS: the dog is fine, and my wife’s aunt laughed about it (on the outside), so I think I’m in the...

This is hard because we love the cheesecake here and it has been my birthday cake for the past couple years but this year was different. My husband called about a week in advance to order and he said he would need to pick up at a certain time. Originally they said we normally do 3pm but we can make 2:30 work. When we arrived at the time to pick up the order, he was told it’s not ready and won’t be ready until 3pm. The excuse of it not being ready because they were closed the two previous days didn’t add up. He told them he placed it for 2:30pm and the person who took the order said not a problem. Frustrated but we left and said we’d be back at 3pm. When we came back, my husband ran in to get the order and was told still not ready and won’t be ready until 3:15/3:30ish. Now, we understand things happen but to keep getting the run around for a 6in preordered cheesecake with no elaborate decorations is ridiculous. The staff seemed to not care and just continued to talk to each other and seemed annoyed that we asked about our order. We walked away for a couple minutes and then back in because the frustration had increased. When we walked back in a new staff member asked if we were here to pick up a cheesecake and we said yes but the times keep changing and we were suppose to get at 2:30pm. He said it will be up in a minute. How does it go from not ready until maybe 3:15/3:30 to in a minute? We waited and then our order came out. He was the only one that showed urgency while the other front staff members just stood there and talked to each other looking like they could care less. He apologized but you could tell he was stressed and trying to get the other staff members to get things done. Mind you, it was not busy when we were there so that was another reason why were confused by the whole situation. When we arrived home we then noticed there was a break/crack in the chocolate covering of the cheesecake that added to the frustration.

The cheesecake itself was amazing as always but the service we experienced really left a bad impression on us and makes us question if we should break tradition and go elsewhere. We understand having a bad/off day but how the staff treated us/handled the situation and seemed like they could care less really didn’t sit right with us. We appreciate the one staff member that got us our order and could tell we were upset though. It did seem like he was trying g to get the staff to get motivated and get things done, but the other front staff were rude and showed no interest.

It was not a good experience, especially on...

WEDDING REVIEW: This is a very mixed review about our experience with Simma's for our wedding. We did a sweets table with about 450 mini desserts, as well as a small cake. Starting out with the pros, their desserts are delicious! We had a ton of people at our wedding complimenting the desserts, and asking where we got them from.

Now the cons: They were terrible to work with. We had a really bad experience with the wedding consultant we had. She was always short with us, rude, and very impersonal. While all of our other vendors made us feel special and taken care of on our wedding day, she never did. In fact, rather than take care of us, Simma's actually added a ton of stress for more than one reason. 1) We purposely did not rent stands/displays from them because we knew we would not be able to return them (we live out of state, and left town the day after the wedding). However, in our last call with our wedding consultant, she informed us that there was still a piece we would have to return. She waited until a week before our wedding to even mention this, so we had to scramble to find someone who could return it. 2) Simma's does not set up the desserts. It is not even an option you can pay for them to do. This was shocking for us to find out, because most other bakeries would have handled the delivery and set up. This meant we had to also find someone to set up the desserts, since they were being delivered 2 hours before the ceremony, and the wedding party and families were busy with other things.

Overall, I would have a really hard time recommending Simma's to anyone for their wedding. For everyday desserts, they are great, but to work with on a wedding, was not a...