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| - I have a friend who teaches at BW, so I was exposed to this place years before the recent brouhaha (woman violating the law by telling a blind customer that she couldn't come in with her service dog).
I couldn't wait to try it-- I'm always hoping to find the local business that is an undiscovered gem. But I haven't been a customer in some time.
Let's start with some cold, hard truth. This woman was not a cuddly grandma with a twinkle in her eye, offering a smile and a kind word to everyone she met. She's of those cranky battle-axes that you tiptoed around, so they wouldn't go off on you-- the kind where you leave shaking your head and saying "I understand that she's been there forever-- I just don't understand WHY."
You ask for chocolate chip cookies, she grabs for pecan raisin and when you point out that she got the order wrong, she yells at you. She's ringing your order up and your wife decides to add something extra and she yells at her.
(Since they don't take credit cards and there's no high-tech point of sales system tied to an inventory management system, who cares?)
You make a spur-of-the-moment decision buy a birthday cake and want a message added. She goes off. It's one thing to say "Sorry, but the decorator who does that isn't here", and another to scream that you need 24 hours notice and how dare you just come in and expect them to drop everything.
All of the above would be tolerable if the product was astonishingly good. The waitresses at the old Corky & Lenny's used to be so brusque that they made you long for the warmth and kindness of the Cleveland Police. But the food was good enough that you accepted it. (The woman who does my alterations, and the guys who repair my appliances can be the same way.)
The food you get from Dick's Bakery simply isn't good enough to justify service issues. Using the same recipe and the same ingredients you used in 1953 does mean your food is less likely to be filled with chemicals. That said, advances in both ingredients and equipment make it possible to create food that is much higher in quality than it was 60+ years ago.
Plus, times and taste change, I'm not a big fan of fondant, but their buttercream is quite ordinary. The maple frosting is cloying.
I tried cookies, cakes, tarts, pies, doughnuts and danishes-- all solidly in the middle of the pack. I didn't even bother with the breads-- they looked sad. I can think of places elsewhere in Berea, or in Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, Lakewood, Maple Heights, Parma, Rocky RIver and Columbia Station that stomp it. There are probably half a hundred neighborhood bakeries scattered around Cuyahoga County as good or better,
I'd give it 2.5 to 3 stars on the food (OK, nothing amazing), but the old lady, the erratic selection (you never know what will be there) and not taking credit cards make it easy to take it down to 2.
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