Regent Bakery and Cafe: Cakes and Chinese, As You Please
Tucked away in a strip mall, Regent Bakery serves up quick and tasty Chinese food alongside some of the most amazing pastries on Seattle's East Side. Regent Bakery and Café may seem a little schizophrenic at first: the left side is full of cases of elaborately decorated cakes, vibrantly colored pastries, and enough cookies to build a gingerbread hut, while the right hosts a scattering of tiny tables, around which diners cluster, eating Chinese food produced somewhere in the back.
After a lunch of ma po tofu or Singapore fried rice, however, the wisdom of having pastries close at hand and ready to finish the meal off may become apparent.
Many of the cakes come from a western tradition: layered Black Forest and tiramisu cakes sit covered with frosting swirls. But others come from an equally delicious eastern menu: mango mousse and red bean, passion fruit slices glittering with sugar syrup. For those who don't want to take the temptation of an entire cake home, individual slices are arrayed in calorie-layered lines, as pleasing to the eye as to the taste buds.
The restaurant does a lively take-out business, and those unwilling to wait for one of the crowded tables will discover that option just as valid as eating it there.
The restaurant's not much for atmosphere, though it's got the standard maneki neko cat greeting customers beside the cash register and growths of ornamental bamboo near the entrance. But it makes up for lack of pizzazz with the flavor and speed of its dishes.
HelloSeattle Tip: Fans of the video game Portal may be interested in knowing that the cake in the game Portal, described as "so delicious and moist," was inspired by a Black Forest cake from the Regent Bakery and Cafe.
Posted on Mar 17, 2011 by Cat Rambo
