The Brick Street Bakery is a darling cafe style, quick stop located by the front gates of the Distillery District. It is a popular stop for tourists and locals alike for a quick lunch where you can expect fast and friendly service before carrying on with your day. The bakery also has a nice patio free of busy downtown traffic where you can basque in the sun and enjoy the heritage site’s beauty for the old.
The Brick Street Bakery is a charming, cozy space integrating antique kitchenware period pieces from the turn of the 20th century, like an antique cash register and an old iron rod gate inside the English Bakery shop. It feels nice to experience century old charm when ordering take-out. Behind the counter there is a lot of food preparation going on. I am greeted with a smile and a, “What can I get you?” from the staff.
Its busy in here. The bakery’s most popular pastries are the banana bread and cookies. There is a school for girls visiting and they are all buying the sugar coated cookies and holding up the lunch rush. I can see the office workers are getting impatient while thy wait to order their jerk chicken pies and hot pork sandwiches. While I wait I listen to other patrons chatting and overhear that the banana bread is made with extra butter so that’s probably why it sells out. For those of you who enjoy the savory pastries, they make pigs in a blanket and traditional meat pies made with lamb, not beef. They also bake a variety of delicious crunchy on the outside, soft in the middle breads. You know, the kind you ate on your last trip to Europe. They tend to be around five dollars a loaf.
Unfortunately they don’t have the equipment or capacity to bake that much bread and cookies and roast chicken pies in that small of a space anymore, because they have two other bakeries now as well. Indeed they have three bakeries to service and all patrons must get the same high quality food, so it is baked fresh at a nearby Leslieville location and catered to the Distillery District’s location. However they do prepare the meals in house. The menu below shows the variety of flavorful hot or cold sandwiches they serve. The coronation hot sandwich is named after what the Queen of England wanted to eat for her Coronation. I am informed it was a combination of English food, with a mix of the orient hence the apricot and almond fillings in the sandwich. I would go for the Boxing Day hot sandwich because to me, one of my favorite memories of Christmas Day is my Dad drooling over the cranberry turkey lunch sandwiches my step mother makes for the family (which later becomes turkey stew). Never thought I could get those memories on a daily basis, and not to pricey either!
It’s nice to know the bakery kind of reflects what the Distillery District is all about. Preserving old world quality and culture to function with our modern style of living in Toronto.