The Two Minute Review: Baked and Bottled, Ashtown

Lisa Cope
45 minutes ago
2 min read

What should we know about Baked and Bottled?

Korean pastry chef Eojin Lee made her name with pre-order patisserie Ondo, and desserts like fig shortcake and strawberry fraisiers gaining all the attention. Before this she also ran a Korean hot food stall, but pastry and cakes seem to be her happy place.

Baked and Bottled is her first café and bakery, open since January in Ashtown, and fully bootstrapped. This is a desperately under-served area for nice things to eat and drink, and with a growing number of locals, it looks like a great choice of location. You can also order those Ondo-style cakes for collection, so file that away for your next special occasion.

What's the seating like?

There's a good amount of tables along the window and in the back of the café. There's also a bench outside where you can perch with a coffee and pastry in the sun.

What did you have?

Pretty much everything from the counter (we're dedicated). It's packed with sweet and savoury creations, classic and lesser seen, along with breads to take away. There's also a breakfast/lunch menu with granola, toasties, pancakes and more, but how could you look past that counter.

A K-BBQ sausage roll (€5.95) should be your first savoury order, but they gave it to us cold. After cutting it and realising we asked them to heat it, and suddenly congealed fat turned to dripping juice. They also brought a yuzu mayo post heating which raised the game on chunky pork mince, sweet and spicy flavours, and all the layers.

A ham and kimcheese pain suisse lookalike (€5.50) also had great flavours but should have been heated - hard cheese doesn't hit like gooey cheese. The kimchi flavours could have been louder too. Focaccia of the day was nduja and ricotta (€7.50), and it's good bread, but was crying out for sea salt on top and oil on the bottom.

A pain suisse (€4.50) and almond croissant (€4.50) were technically perfect, the croissant just the right side of over/double baked, with all the colour and crunch you could want.

A matcha cream and strawberry Danish (€5.50) is best left to those who love the bitter, vegetal flavour of the ubiquitous green tea. The strawberry brought balance, but there wasn't enough of it.

We took home flourless chocolate cake and a chocolate pecan cookie for later, and if you'd made either at home you'd be bookmarking the recipe as the only one you're using from now on.

What about drinks?

The one big drawback here is coffee. It's from a big, commercial, Italian brand, and tastes like something you'd get in a kid's play centre (we've actually had better in play centres). It's bitter and over extracted, robusta over arabica - the kind you choke down in Spain and Italy because you're on holidays. They picked it because they supplied the coffee machine (a big cost), but in a city with so many brilliant roasters (and discerning coffee drinkers), this feels like a big misstep.

Why should we go?

Go for the pastries, the craft, to collect a pre-ordered cake, but if you love coffee the way we love coffee, you might want to grab that elsewhere.