Saturday, May 5, 2012

85 Degrees Celsius and JJ Bakery

Have you heard of 85 Degrees Celsius. If not then you must live under a rock! It's the most popular bakery right now. 85 Degrees Celsius is famous for having pretty original pastries. This ranges from delicious chocolate bread, or a decadent cream cheese....pastry thingamabob, to a taro bun, squid ink buns (which i have not tried yet) or just plain fluffy white bread. Each time you go  there there's something new. You go in and it's crazy. The store is packed with people and a giant line that usually goes out the door.
Look how packed it is!
You go into the store and you get a tray and a pair of tongs. Then you can walk around and go to the little compartments that store the pastries (which are warm inside) and pick whatever you want. You actually can see workers rushing back and forth, trying to push through the crowd to replace pastries with warm and freshly baked pastries.
Other pastry

Taro Bun
 It's crazy in there though. The taro pastries they have are always good. They also have sesame buns, red bean, giant (and I mean GIANT) bagel type stuff which are actually coated in sugar and other spices. You may want to bring a few people with you. One group of people can wait in line while you pick out what pastries you want. Once you get in line, you can choose drinks from the menu. This includes smoothies, hot chocolates, boba (which I love..a different post) and their famous Sea Salt Coffee brewed perfectly to 85 degrees Celsius.
Sea Salt Coffee!


Don't want to wait in line? Don't want sweets? Then go to JJ Bakery. JJ Bakery's pretty popular too...until 85 degrees Celsius came along. They serve delicious food, that can be salty or sweet. The have really good tofu soup and Nwo Mi Fan Twan (which is kind of a rice roll filled with meat and crunchy crullers)  and they have a delicious pork chashu rice bowl and noodles (including my favorite Beef Noodle Soup).
Beef Noodle Soup
JJ Bakery











Nuo mi fan tuan
Green Tea Mochi
 It's so delicious, my parents came to Big Bear to visit my cousin and I, who were in a Chinese Camp (but that's another story. :D), and brought two delicious pork chashu bowls with them. We weren't allowed to eat in the cabin but we sneaked it in. They had chopsticks in the bag too. While we ate...we kinda got carried away. It wasn't our fault, you'd think that at a Chinese Camp they'd have Chinese food, but they didn't.  We were getting antsy without our rice. So we took pictures of ourselves enjoying it.
Anyways, that means you have to try it. It was enough to have my cousin and I struggle through a few more days trying to speak Chinese (just kidding, it was actually pretty fun...but like I said that's a different story)

Hope you like these. I know I do... I really want some chinese food now. Sigh. This is what happens when you're a food critic.