Food Review: The Bakery

Just off Main Street, down North Front St and next to one of the two bike shops in New Paltz, sits a free-standing building aptly named The Bakery. It's grown to a pretty large building these days; apparently it used to be quite cosy. According to one reviewer, there was a time when it could only seat 5 patrons. These days there is a fairly spacious downstairs area for placing orders and grabbing the local and state newspapers. Thru the rear door is a lovely little outside eating area. Upstairs are tables for several dozen customers as well as a play area for toddlers. It's a wonderful location, and in many ways it's the heart of New Paltz. The only things not working for The Bakery, it's sad to report, are the coffee and the food.

Minor quibbles, I know. A bakery used to be known as a place to get a tasty croissant, some pain au chocolat, or a cookie or cake. And this place has them all. There are also soups, salads, sandwiches, and other comestibles, as well as quite a few drink choices such as tea and chai. But lately the quality, which seems always to have been suspiciously low, has gone down. Call it a victim of the current economic trend, but when times get tough, some bakeries tough it out by raising prices or by purchasing less expensive ingredients. The Bakery seems to have opted for choice 2.

When we moved to New Paltz just over three years ago, we were thrilled to find a convenient local bakery, and when Shirra opened her store across the street from it, we thought that the gods were smiling upon us. Shirra lamented early on that the coffee was substandard, so she trekked a few yards up the hill to *$$ rather than saving money with The Bakery's weak and off-putting version. Shortly after that, however, we got a surprise in one of our toilets that put the kibosh on The Bakery for food, too.

One fall morning, one of the kids called Shirra to the bathroom. The material in the toilet was inhumanly green. We'd seen this once before and chalked it up to someone eating lots of veggies, but this time it was like something that had come out of a tube of green paint. And that's when Shirra remembered that the kids had been eating one of their favorite glazed yummies at The Bakery the day before. The green-hued poop earned its colors from a witch cupcake. If you're using so much dye in your food that a person shits grass-green, it's time to alter your formula. Since that wasn't happening, we did the next best thing: We altered our formula. Now, if the kids want baked goods, Shirra makes them herself or buys them at Muddy Cup. Now that's a great place for an afternoon snack!