Polonia Sausage House - Review for Polish Poppy Seed Bread

Restaurant: Polonia Sausage House - Review for Polish Poppy Seed Bread

Cuisine: Bakery/Dessert/Cafe

Last visited: February 22, 2010
Area: Vancouver, BC (Hastings-Sunrise)

2434 Hastings Street East
Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Polish Poppy Seed bread: 6

Service: 6

Ambiance: ? It's a grocery store/deli/bakery

Overall: n/a

Additional comments:

• Owned by Polish family
• Frequented by Polish people
• Authentic
• Homemade sausages
• Popular for sausages
• Polish grocery store/deli/bakery
• Baked goods imported fresh daily from nearby bakery
• Frozen perogies available
• Bakery (smaller selection)
• Mostly cheesecakes

**Recommendation: Polish Poppy Seed Bread

This review is only based on the Polish Poppy Seed Bread.

Another random find! I had finished eating at Le Do Vietnamese Restaurant down the street and i was craving some dessert...surprise surprise huh? =p Anyways I started walked up the street and noticed 4 bakeries just one block. I decided to pop into Polonia Sausage House....I don't even kno9w why because they don't advertised being a bakery. Luckily I walked in though because at the back of the store they sell baked goods. There's only a few of each item and the selection is limited. the baked good are actually all made fresh daily...but off site. They bring them in from an Eastern European bakery further down the street...I'm not sure which one though.

Most of the baked goods are different kinds of cheesecakes or pastries with cream. They looked ok, but I'm not a huge fan of cheesecakes so I opted for something I am a BIG fan of...the poppy seed bread! I was introduced to this from my Ukrainian friend and there's lots of interpretations of it, however this is one of the best I've ever had.

The owner was super nice and she told me they have limited selection because they throw away anything that doesn't get sold that day...and I believe her. most bakeries should operate like this I think - I hope they eat them instead of throw them away though...such a waste of good food otherwise.

I want to go back for more poppy seed bread and I also want to try their sausages...they looked good! Very authentic...everyone in there was speaking Polish - owner and customers...I was excited that I had found an authentic Polish place...even if it is a grocery store.

On the table:

**Polish Poppy Seed Bread 6/6

• Half $4.98 Whole loaf $9.98
• The owner was super nice. She charged me $4.30 for half a loaf because it was slightly smaller than half a loaf. Really cute.

• It's a pretty substantial loaf although I finished it in 2 sittings. I bought half a loaf.
  
• I loved this bread! It's half bread and half pastry so I can't really call it a dessert. Would you consider a croissant a dessert? Or a danish? It's almost like that kind of thing.
• This is baked off site at the bakery down the street. YUMMY!

• It's loaded with a poppy seed! The poppy seed is almost like a paste and there's also some candied lemon peel, raisins, and walnuts in it. I loved it! I could have used more raisins and walnuts though...there were so few that I wasn't sure if they had gotten in there by accident....but enough to know that they were intended.

• There's a very strong fresh lemon taste and scent. The candied lemon pieces were actually quite big, but very good! I thought I wouldn't like it either, but it enhanced all the flavours.

• The topping of the bread is almost like a streusel crumb topping. There’s a little bit of icing and a little bit of brown sugar crumb topping. It's delicious.
• The bread part is egg bread. It's dense and crumbly and almost like a lemon loaf cake but not as sweet and a bit drier.
• It dries out quickly if it's not wrapped up, but it's excellent when it's fresh or even slightly warmed up.
• It's not too sweet, but still dessert like. The Poppy Seed Square at Breka Bakery was much more of a dessert. I could this one at any anytime of day...it's delicious.

Breka Bakery

Restaurant: Breka Bakery

Cuisine: Bakery/Desserts
Last visited: December 17, 09
Area: Vancouver, BC (South Vancouver/Fraser)
6533 Fraser Street
Price Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 3
Service: 2
Ambiance: 2
Overall: 2.5
Additional comments:

• European bakery specializing in European desserts
• Open 24/7
• Savoury cafe foods available
• Breads made fresh daily from scratch, by hand
• Halla Bread on Fridays
• On site bakery
• Organic free-trade coffee
• Cheap, pretty big pieces
• For best results: let desserts thaw to room temperature before eating
• Busy, good for coffee breaks/studying
• Relaxed/casual atmosphere
• Eat in/Take-out
• Whole cakes for sale
• Breads to go

**Recommendation: Poppy seed tart, but apparently chocolate mousse cake and cheesecakes are popular, but I didn’t try them

After narrowing down our choices for late night dessert around Burnaby (which was nothing but bubble tea places)…my fellow foodies Kim (I’m Only Here For the Food) and Anita (La Petite Foodie) trekked out to South Vancouver to try Breka Bakery.

I love dessert and we get along very well. I spent some time in Europe researching out the most authentic and traditional desserts, so I come trying Breka Bakery with some knowledge. I’m also blessed with great friends so I’ve been lucky enough to have tried home baked European desserts too. The style of desserts at Breka Bakery is denser than they are light and delicate. They were more Eastern European than Western and they had a bit of American flair to them. I only tried 3 desserts at Breka so I really need to try more to give a better review.

I’ve heard of Breka Bakery before but the reviews for it were only okay. I knew it was a 24 hour place so it’s not like I was expecting oompa loompas in the back making desserts 24/7. However I was expecting very homemade style desserts, but they were actually quite professional, but not gourmet professional. They were grocery store professional. Just standardized and very mass

produced looking – maybe it was the way they were all laid out in sheet pans in the display case. When I see desserts like this I can’t help but to think how long it’s been sitting there for. Next time I will go in the morning because I think it would have been better.

I think it’s popular and well-liked mainly for its portion and price. For the price you pay it does the job and settles the sweet tooth. It's not the best, but for the area and for what you get, it's fine. I wish they had more options - they have a lot, but only 4 things made me "ooh" and "ahh"...and I LOVE dessert (if I haven’t made that clear ;)). I was expecting at least 8 things to make me do that.

On the table:

Poppy Square 4/6

• A poppy seed square or tart with poppy seed filling $2.50
• This was my choice. I love poppy seed! The more the better and this one had lots of poppy seed. I've had variations of this, but this is the most poppy seed filling I've seen used. Which is fine by me! The poppy seed filling was sweet but not too sweet - a little nutty, very moist and paste-like. It’s soft and smooth yet it's poppy seeds so there's texture.
• It’s made of poppy seed, sugar and butter and there is also a very subtly tang and I'm 99% sure there's lemon juice in there giving it that tang. It's not sour though. I wish they used some zest too. There may also be some honey to round it all out.
• Let it thaw out to room temperature and the flavour really comes through.
• The crust was more of a cake-like crust rather than pie crust, which I liked. It was soft, moist and buttery almost like pound cake, yet sturdy enough to hold the heavy poppy seed filling. It was actually a tad salty too, it worked with the filling. I really liked the thinness of the crust. For this dessert in particular I prefer lots of filing with little crust anyways.
• On top was a soft cake-like lattice top with a sugar syru p and lemon glaze to make it shiny.

  

Tiramisu 2/6

• Tiramisu Square $3.50

  

• I didn't like that it was precut. I felt as though it was more of a cake than a tiramisu. It was very dense and not light and fluffy. More cheesy and heavier on the mascarpone than it was creamy, but maybe it just needed to thaw.
• The lady fingers could have been more soaked because they were a bit dry and I also couldn’t taste any rum. It just lacked flavour.
• I didn’t like that there was only one layer of lady fingers and the bottom layer was a cake layer. I felt like this was cheating because a tiramisu should always have 2 layers of tightly packed lady fingers. I also liked them more tightly packed together in a layer, rather than spread out. I like to have a bite of lady finger cookies in every bite.
• Lots of cream but it was sturdy cream. Wh at this means is that you could slice into it and pull away with a clean knife.

  

Lemon Custard Bar 2/6

• Lemon Custard Bar $2.25
• This one was dense and sweet and the lemon custard wasn’t as creamy. They do call it a bar rather than a tart so maybe the lemon custard was supposed to be more solid. It could have been the fact that it was sitting in a chilled display case so it was a bit stiff.
• The flavour of the lemon custard was a bit sweet and I think it could have beeen more tart. It was a radioactive yellow, so I’m not sure if it was from a little dye.
• The crust was a shortbread crust and it was very buttery and cookie like. I liked the thinness of crust because it made the bar lighter in texture overall. It needed that because the lemon custard was already dense.
• I’ve had better before, and just thought this was ok, kind of boring and just ‘whatever’ for a lack of a better term.