Uprising Breads Bakery

Restaurant: Uprising Breads Bakery
Cuisine: Bakery/Breads/Desserts
Last visited: March 20, 2010
Location: Vancouver, BC (Commercial Drive/Grandview)
Address: 1697 Venables Street
Price Range: $10 or less

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

Food: n/a, haven’t tried enough
Service: n/a, I wasn’t there
Ambiance: n/a
Overall: n/a
Additional comments:

• 30+ years
• Focus on all natural fresh baked bread
• Popular to locals in the area
• Popular for bread
• All natural ingredients
• No preservatives
• No sugar, natural sweeteners like honey in bread(s)
• Lots of vegan/organic options
• Dessert available
• Coffee available
• Wholesale available
• Bread available at IGA, Whole Foods etc.
• Baked goods to go
• Mon-Fri 7am-7pm
• Sat-Sun 7am-6pm

**Recommendations: n/a, haven’t tried enough

Uprising Bakery caters to a very unique clientele. They’re located in the Commercial area which means their market is health-conscious. Commercial is notorious in Vancouver, BC for being stereotyped as the hippie part of town. Therefore Uprising Bakeries offers all natural products made with no preservatives. They have tons of vegan and organic options and even a few items that are gluten-free. They mainly focus on bread but they do offer pastries, desserts, muffins, scones, and pies.

So if whole wheat chocolate cookies (reviewed in Kim’s post) isn’t for you – then maybe Uprising Bakery isn’t for you either. Mind you they do have an extensive list of baked goods. Everything is actually quite pricey so I have to keep reminding myself of the clientele and area. You do get what you pay for and at Uprising Bakery it is quality.

I wasn’t too impressed with the desserts I had and I found them rather small and also expensive. It’s not like I could tell they were made with all natural ingredients and it came off as very home made or I felt like I could find them at the neighborhood bake sale. I actually shared these desserts so I didn’t select them or go inside myself. I won’t let this experience represent the bakery because I haven’t nearly tried enough. I have faith there is much better.

On the table:

Cranberry Square – 4/6

• A lemon cranberry bar $2
• This is the best of the 3 desserts I tried. It was really small though. Maybe 2′ X 2′ inches and an 1.5′ high? it was a very rustic dessert and I think it should have been $1.50 for the size.
• It was very good though. It had some whole fresh cranberries and it was quite tart but also sweet enough. It was quite dense and almost paste like. It had a tender crust on the bottom and the bar was quite chewy which I like.

Deluxe Lemon Tart- 2/6

• $2.95
• I thought this was very expensive. It was the size of a small egg tart.
• It’s basically a min lemon meringue pie. It was really fresh but the filling had curdled and it wasn’t smooth in texture. It was quite thick and creamy and I think they did use fresh lemon zest, but what I was tasting was curds. It was very distracting. The flavour was not bad though – good balance of tart and sweet.
• The crust was very delicate and almost breaking before I could eat. (Mind you it did travel a bit before I ate it) I could barely pick it up without it crumbling apart. It was a softer crust and shortbread like but less buttery in flavour.

New York Style Cheese Cake -1.5/6

• $3.75
• First off, I don’t like cheesecake… and even if I do it’s never the New York ones. So this was not my choice, however I will still always eat/try it. So far the one at Trees Organic Coffee & Roasting House is a good one.
• This is about 3′ X 2′ inches and maybe an 1.5′ tall. It was the biggest dessert of the 3, and the only one where I thought the price was justifiable for the size. I just wish it was good though – so in a sense the price still didn’t match.
• It was very dense, which is how a New York Style Cheese Cake should be, however it seemed too dense and almost stale. It was very chewy, very cheesy in taste and quite tart. I felt like spreading it on a bagel.
• The crust wasn’t even that good and I prefer a graham cracker crust. This was almost like a shortbread crust.
• The blueberries were frozen so they were all wrinkly and the presentation wasn’t great either. I wasn’t a fan.

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