The OC Register's Jon Lansner broke the news today that 85°C Bakery Café–the bakery that to this day attracts lines that some people have called “retarded”–has just purchased a 70,492-square-foot industrial building in Brea for $5.64 million. He quotes a representative from the real estate company who brokered the deal as saying that “the industrial building will serve as the chain's corporate bakery, enabling the chain to grow.” Essentially this will be a factory. The Filipino bakery Red Ribbon operates this way. They don't bake anything in the individual stores.
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Does this development mean that the 85°C Bakery Café in Irvine and
Hacienda Heights will follow the example and cease to bake their own
items in-store and rely on this centralized factory for shipments? One
hopes not, because the entire dynamic, the reason for 85°C's appeal is
that you are ensured that what you buy is just inches and seconds away
from the oven.
In my first review of the place I said:
“The crowds guarantee that nothing stays unbought longer than a few
minutes. Stocks are continually replenished, and this fact makes
everything crackle at its most optimal, which, in turn, brings in even
more customers. It's a self-feeding cycle of freshness. Sometimes, what you eat is only seconds removed from the oven. I
plucked coffee bread from the arms of an employee carrying out a tray
from the kitchen. Its fluffy insides billowed java-perfumed steam when I
tore it open. A few moments later, the rest sold out. Lesser bakeries would revert to boring, easy-to-churn-out standards
to keep up with this kind of demand, but 85°C's popularity seems to only
embolden its resolve and spur its creativity. Every hour yields
something new.”
Yes, I just rewarmed that last part from something I produced a long time ago. Let's hope that 85°C doesn't do the same.
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.