BANGKOK, Nov 25 — Some places you patronise every day, perhaps for your morning coffee or a rushed meal, but they never feel quite familiar or cosy. Maybe the barista doesn’t bother to make eye contact; maybe the lunch hour crowd hovering at your table, willing you to hurry up and finish, can be a tad stressful.
Then there are places where you’ve never been before but once you arrive, it feels like coming home. These might not even be places you visit all the time but sporadically, when you are able to. As the years pass, these places grow as they change with time, and they grow on you.
Baker Gonna Bake, a bakery café in the tree-lined neighbourhood of Bangkok’s Sukhumvit Soi 26, is one of these places.
We first discovered it when we visited Bangkok during long weekends a couple of years ago. Wandering around Sukhumvit Soi 26, not far from our hotel, became a favourite activity, partly due to the abundance of leafy cover from the relentless sun and partly because we felt less like tourists walking here, free from the usual throngs at the shopping malls, temples and weekend markets.
Stumbling upon Baker Gonna Bake is akin to uncovering some hidden treasure simply by chance. It didn’t look like a bakery or a café, to be honest; adorned with plenty of plants, both live and dried, we initially thought it was a florist.
The foliage and flowers are an indispensable part of Baker Gonna Bake’s charm: you feel like you’re walking into someone’s well-kept garden or greenhouse. The high floor-to-ceiling windows and minimalist white walls lend an aura of airiness. Then you notice all the tables and benches and chairs, made from different types and shades of wood.
Some even have witty instructions painted on them, such as “Eat here” or “Sit here” (shades of a less hallucinogenic Alice in Wonderland perhaps). There is a touch of the artisanal here and for once that word isn’t hyperbolic. Nothing feels curated but more just artfully thrown together. It feels natural.
Given its name (and the fact it started life as an online bakery), there are plenty of freshly baked pastries in the morning. Buttery croissants and flaky pain au chocolat require only a cup of coffee — black, please — brewed to order by the jovial baristas. (They will always ask you how your day is and suddenly you find that it is a very good day indeed.)
Besides the espressos and flat whites, there are plenty of cooler refreshments to help deal with the encroaching Bangkok heat as midday looms. The yuzu iced tea is tangy with a hint of honey while the rose soda is topped with a toothpick skewer of lychees, a peppermint leaf and dusted with dried rose petals.
Meals can be light or hearty depending on your appetite. There is typical Western-style café fare such as scrambled eggs with mushrooms on toast. The spaghetti with dried chillies and crispy bacon, topped with a poached egg, is cooked al dente, a rarity for a non-Italian establishment.
Longing for the street food out there in the soi? You will be happy to find Thai classics such as pad krapao gai (spicy Thai basil chicken with rice) — complete with a crispy kai dao (fried egg; not on the menu but you can ask for it) — and a very comforting gai pa lo (five-spice powder chicken stew with hard boiled eggs).
For teatime, there is a rotation of cakes, some of them using seasonal fruits such as durian and marian plums. Is there anything more Thai than a coconut pie, topped with a generous curl of fresh coconut flesh? Ah, but the Japanese influence too, in the form of a creamy matcha tart.
You won’t want to miss the brownie here; it tastes like the stickiest chocolate fudge you can imagine — and that’s a good thing. The mashed purple sweet potato tart is neither too dense nor cloying, framed in a chocolate cookie base which gives it a nice bite and bitterness.
With subsequent visits, you will realise that not only the arrangements of fresh flowers and dried grasses will change but even the furniture. There is a sense of restlessness here; ironic given how rooted you feel when you return. Life is, after all, a series of paradoxes, is it not?
Some days we are surprised, delightfully so, by a limited menu that feels as though it has appeared out of the blue. Once the café offered zaru soba — chilled noodles served with grated ginger and wasabi, fresh greens and pickles, and a tiny teapot filled with men tsuyu for dipping — that was quite enjoyable to have on a hot day.
The juxtaposition of the Japanese ceramic bowls and saucers and a Thai woven rattan platter is very much in the spirit of the place. This is where everyone and all cultures are welcome. This is where we all come together in perfect harmony. Where the bakers bake and we get to be ourselves.
Baker Gonna Bake
61, Sukhumvit Soi 26, Bangkok, Thailand
Tel: 092-651-6463
www.facebook.com/Bakergonnabakecafe
