The Best Bakery Cafes in Toronto
The best bakery cafes in Toronto serve up much more than your morning brew. Instead, these spots offer a range of tasty treats, inviting spaces designed for comfort and chummy service — whether it's your first or your hundredth visit.
Here are the best bakery cafes in Toronto.
This Queen West go-to could coast solely on the popularity of its voluptuous, just-baked, gooey, crisp OG chocolate chip cookies. Much to its credit, the industrious team goes above and beyond, with an admirable spread of breakfast, brunch and lunch classics along with butter-laden pastries and sweets.
Pastry dreams come true at this pastel-hued shrine to butter, with locations in Leslieville and at Yonge & Lawrence. Besides crisp macarons and crumble-topped pies, the team bakes up tender scones, elaborate layer cakes and cupcakes capped with buttercream flowers. Cups of tea, robust coffee and hot chocolate crowned with singed marshmallows complete the reverie.
Entering this Regent Park cafe means accepting the shower of buttery, golden croissant flakes that will soon cover every visible inch of your clothes. No matter. With layered pastries — from caramelized kouign amann to revelatory NY rolls — as good as these, you'd happily bathe in butter for a taste. The café gilds the lily with a comprehensive menu of hot drinks and savoury snacks.
At this Japanese-style chain — with locations in the Entertainment District, at Yonge & College, and more — chic interiors are matched by equally classy fare, from statuesque sandos to marshmallowy mochi as cute and plump as Pokémon. A deluge of drinks includes seasonal lemonades, matcha-based lattes and showy cocktails capable of tempting customers to linger late.
While other places are doling out simple drop cookies and pound cake, the team at this Little Italy cafe is piping swag borders onto layered pink Champagne cakes, stacking sponge into checkered Battenbergs and generally making customers' baked-good dreams come true. The fact that the team also makes a killer breakfast sandwich is, well, just icing on the cake.
Sweet and savoury butter scones zhuzhed up with all manner of flavourful add-ins are this Dundas West spot's stock-in-trade. Eat one in the vibrant space — in a parfait, s'mores-ified (with chocolate and a torched marshmallow), or plain — then order a half dozen to tote home. With options like chive, bacon and cheese; adzuki bean mochi; and butter caramel, it's likely you'll find several that appeal.
At this Kensington Market micro bakery, aromatic brews meet their match in hand-crafted viennoiserie, from butter croissants to puffy Danishes flaunting a fruity core. Warm-weather visitors have the advantage of snagging a chair outside, where the flurry of crumbs doesn't feel quite so inconvenient.
Fareen Karim at Evana Patisserie & Cafe
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