Hot, casual and right in tune
September 06, 2007
ANDREW P. COPPOLINO For NightLife
The first thing you notice when you enter Cambridge City Cafe Bakery is a blast of wood-fragranced heat emanating from a sizable pizza oven that stands commandingly before you: owner and restaurant visionary John Bergen knows from kilns.
An Ontario College of Art graduate and former ceramics artist, Bergen's designs for Mikasa dishes from many years ago are apparently still kicking around. That background, and his experience with his City Cafe Bakery in downtown Kitchener's south end, has taught him how to heat things up in extremely hot ovens very well indeed.
His design training, sense of style, and his vision is one of simplicity and cooking up good quality food. It is a balance he has been able to maintain, both here and at the original Kitchener cafe, which was the template for the new Preston location.
The formula works well. Cambridge City Cafe Bakery offers only a few items, noted on hanging blackboards, is set in a casual and practical environment (it's an attractively renovated old gas station) with vibrant colours and the large rolling garage door as it prepares a higher-end quality of baked goods and thin-crust pizza.
Most intriguing about the Bergen vision is that it relies on folks' good nature and the honour system: customers drop their money into an old transit-bus fare-box, just like at the Kitchener location (they will make change upon request). The cooks will bring your sandwich or pizza to your table if you are eating in. If there is any uncertainly about how the whole process works, just ask the friendly staff.
A couple of countertops have all the accoutrements ready for when you want to bag your own sandwich or double-double your own coffee. Want a soda? Grab it from the cooler next to you. Just pay on your way out.
Bergen's pizza, cooked crispy in all of those hundreds of degrees pumped out by that wood-fired heat, qualifies as some of the best 'zza around because it emphasizes the toppings, not crust and gooey cheese.
An eggplant, caramelized onion and feta version comes sans tomato sauce, and it is a cracker, both in its goodness and its crispy crust. The eggplant has been treated properly so there is no bitterness and has excellent body. The quarter-pizza serving makes a nice light lunch for $5.50 (prices include tax). All beverages are $1.50.
Piping hot and packed with complex flavour, a roasted chicken and pesto pizza with a nicely acidic tomato sauce is simply superb (all whole pizzas are $15 take out or $17 eat in). There is also a portobello mushroom pizza and a pepperoni (the latter available only at lunch).
Cafe bakers also prepare daily breads such as Pugliese sour dough or a seven-grain loaf which you can buy for $3.25 or have as a tuna, chicken or ham melt or sandwich ($5.50).
A simple tuna sandwich on sour dough with a slice of cheese, tomato, and light dressing is held together by the very fresh bread possessed of a full-bodied crumb and a thick, chewy crust with the slight tang of the sour dough. A funky corn salad with mustard seed, a bit of cabbage and a nicely acidic vinaigrette is another perfect light lunch ($5.50).
Cambridge City Cafe Bakery staff also cook up croissant ($1.25 take out; $1.50 eat in), very good Montreal-style bagels, and baked goods like muffins, wonderful butter tarts, rhubarb tarts, gluten-free date squares, and brownies ($1.50). It all makes for a great vision -- and a great taste.
CAMBRIDGE CITY CAFE BAKERY 172 KING ST. E., CAMBRIDGE (NO PHONE)
Lunch of pizza slices and soft drinks for two is $15. No slices available after 3 p.m.
Tuesday to Saturday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Cash only.
http://news.therecord.com/article/238008
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Originally Posted by leaffan
