this ain't a hood pt 1: Perfect Blend Bakery & Espresso Bar

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A customer walks in and is greeted by a nice barista who says, "Welcome to Perfect Blend, let me know when you're ready to order." The barista's wiping down the tables with no rush at all, while the owner's frantically pacing up and down looking all over the place. Apparently a dog shit in front of the little two table "patio" they have in front there, the owner didn't know what to clean it up with. The customer took her time. Clearly she didn't know what she wanted and could you blame her? The selection was out of this world. From coffee to tea to lattes and gelato. Of course there's all the amazing baked goods they have displayed ever so nicely there plus sandwiches and salads.

Perfect Blend is a gorgeous café that really reminded me of Twiggs in North Bay, but a little bit more modern looking. In front of the counter were different food items for sale such as fancy tomato sauces as well as different baskets of fresh bread based items such as rolls and bagels. I saw another customer go in just to buy bread from them which is pretty unique, I don't think I've seen cafés really do that (correct me if I'm wrong). Another thing I was surprised to see was no WiFi, now it's not advertised that they didn't have it,curious I turned on the WiFi on my phone and saw two locked connections that belonged elsewhere. This reminded me of something I overheard someone say at a different café, he said "If I were to open my own cafe I'd have no WiFi and put a sign that said 'No Wifi, talk to each other instead." Now I have no idea if that was the owner's mindset but it's a nice welcome to not see people just sitting there drinking coffee with their laptops. I barely touched my phone after I checked unless I wanted to take a picture of something.

Atmosphere and looks don't mean anything unless Perfect Blend has the food to match it right? I'm glad to tell you that it sure does.

Disclaimer - I went to Perfect Blend back to back - once on the Friday afternoon and the other on a Saturday morning.

Now that little blurb up there that you just read is the Saturday morning I went to P.B. What I ordered is the following,

• Small Coffee
• Chocolate Chunk Cookie
• "Monster" Cookie

Now I won't lie to you, I've only started drinking coffee for the past couple of months so my coffee judging skills are not up to par as others. Like most cafés the coffee comes black and you go to the counter in front of the cashier area to pour whatever you like into it. So I did it pouring what I hoped was my usual 2 cream 1 sugar mix. It wasn't. It was a lot more bitter than that but surprisingly I enjoyed it a lot. I didn't have to go back to re-pour sugar or cream. Personally I really liked the coffee. It only comes in one variety which is just the Perfect Blend coffee. Not dark, blonde or cruelty free or whatever other bullshit type of coffee there is. If there's any cons to the coffee I'd say that they fill it almost to the brim, which sounds like a first world problem only because if I poured too much cream it would of overflowed. Which it did. Opps.

The cookies however is something I could judge since they're my favourite baked anything ever. For lack of better words - these cookies are dope. When I bite into the Chocolate chunk cookie, the cookie is hella soft and the chocolate was nice and gooey. The one word that comes to me is FRESH. The cookie has such a nice cookie to chocolate ratio I wolf it down and drown it with coffee and the combo itself is just so delicious! The other cookie the "Monster" cookie reminds me of the Chips Ahoy Cookie with the rainbow chips in it. At first when I saw it I thought they were M&Ms but they weren't, the chips were actually bigger than M&Ms. When you bite down on them there's no crunchy shell at all. Same as the chocolate chunk it was soft and just bursting with chocolate which is  awesome.

The cookies and small coffee comes up to $3.50 exact. Not bad at all.

Coffee + Cookies = 8.5/10

cheap + effective = makes me want to go back to try other desserts/lattes.

Lets go back to the Friday now. Perfect Blend Café - Weston Road. Friday afternoon.

They were busy. People were talking to each other then there's the odd ball - me sitting alone taking pictures of what I ordered. So what did I order? Well for weeks now they've had a sign promoting what they call the "Bagel Buster"

The Bagel Buster comes in 3 different options: BLT, Egg & Cheese, and Ham, egg and cheese.

You choose the bagel you want from the baskets of bagels behind you,  like Tim's they have whole wheat (sold out), Pretzel (sold out), and others. When I went back on the Saturday morning they were all restocked so I'd go early for lunch if I were you.

I end up getting the Ham, Egg & cheese. the Bagel was buttered. I really wished they put some kind of sauce with a leaf of lettuce and tomato on it but even without it, it was pretty damn good. The ham stood out a lot because it wasn't like the thin Subway ham. It was more like the Christmas day ham grandma would cut and it wasn't cold cut ham it was warm! The bagel wasn't over buttered like KFC's bread but when you're comparing it to KFC I guess the bar isn't really set high. The egg was an egg. I mean it was good but still ham = king of this sandwich.

For $4.50, you really couldn't go wrong with this sandwich which they tout as "Breakfast or Lunch on the go." Makes sense.

8/10

So lets recap - a bagel buster, coffee and 2 cookies (mind you each cookie is $1, so substitute that with whatever dessert that fits the $1-$3 range), costs around $8-$9...

Broke & P1cky approved.

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Part 2 of the Weston Rd. "this ain't a hood" Specials coming soon.