Sweet Thang!

Sweet Thang! : Bakery. I was walking along North Ave in Wicker Park the other day. I was going to a job interview, which, fortunately I did not get; thank goodness I didn’t have to tell them I wouldn’t be taking the underpaid, high-stress job surrounded by snobby people, but that is beside the point. Anyway, while walking by the day before, I noticed the Eiffel Tower shaped sign for Sweet Thang, a somewhat trendy little bakery that I’d heard good things about from several local news publications and city food/culture guides which made me want to go in and try it out. Well… just to give a little foreshadowing, I might have to try it again sometime. Let me explain myself, I went into the bakery and it’s a café of sorts as well. Nicely set up, except that the front display-case, for a bakery, was a little spartan, yes, I said Spartan, look it up! It has some unusual implications. Needless to say, there wasn’t much to choose from and all I wanted were a few cookies and something a little special for a friend. I did noticed a few fun-looking desserts and in doing so, lit upon a cute dome shaped chocolate tiramisu cheesecake with what looked like a chocolate graham cracker crust and a dusting of cocoa powder on top...This, was what I wanted, it would be the perfect thank you gift for my friend who loves anything chocolate. I also wanted some oatmeal raisin cookies to take back for everyone at work but unfortunately, things didn’t go as I’d imagined them. Oatmeal raisin is a pretty standard cookie, like Chocolate chip, just not quite as popular, in the mainstream, if of course you consider the mainstream the way to go. I try avoiding the mainstream although I do exploit the convenience of it more often than not, but my preferences are not really the point. Well, I take that back, because the only reason I am writing this is because I have certain preferences so…there you go. So, the cookie... it was a decent oatmeal raisin, and it was a nice 2-3” in diameter and I loved the fact that there were regular raisins, and what I thought looked like dried green grapes along with them…I’m not sure if they were in fact grapes that had been bleached to achieve their lightness, as one of my co-workers’ said, or if they weren’t raisins at all. And if they weren’t raisins, what are they, and why were they in my oatmeal raisin cookie? It terms of cookie consistency, these were nice, but not spectacular. The texture was just about right, it didn’t fall apart when you bit into it and it wasn’t brittle, but…it still wasn’t quite right. I’m not sure what it was exactly that made it seem a little “off”, maybe it was the fact that it was just a little too brown on top, not that the color varied on the surface or was burnt, it just had this strange sort of glazed quality to the surface, as if they contained more than the traditional amounts of sugar or that they were possibly brushed with a sugar-water solution while they were baking. Either way, it made the cookie good, but not great. Do you recall the lovely tiramisu mini cheesecake that I described previously? Well, I didn’t get it…nope, I asked for it and pointed at it and when the girl asked to clarify which cheesecake I wanted, it apparently wasn’t clear enough for her and what did she do? She picked up the one next to it (the more expensive one) and put it in the little box. So instead of getting a chocolate tiramisu I apparently got a strawberry cheesecake with a pink musical clef note. Very cutesy…but not what I wanted. It was apparently “more strawberry than cheesecake” I don’t know if that was good or not. When my friend took a bite, the look on his face… well it wouldn’t be one I’d like when I was eating a dessert. Notwithstanding the cookies and the mistaken cheesecake, I would still have to attempt this bakery again. Hopefully they’ll do better next time, especially in the customer service area, they were nice, but not the level of service one would expect when you are shelling out $10 for a half dozen cookies and a mini cheesecake (the wrong one, no less). Better luck next time. I’m skipping the review on the Mexican Bakery, but hopefully will return to it later. Next, I’ll be describing my first trip to Lula’s in Logan Square.