This actually happened in July, 2009, but I don't remember if I posted it here at the time or not. I just thought that others might benefit from my experience, so here's the blog I wrote about our cake tasting with Bamboo Bakery:
Last night, Shaun, two of my bridesmaids, and I went to our first wedding cake tasting at the Bamboo Bakery in Phoenix. I had researched it and almost all of the reviews (on several websites) were very good. The pictures on their website were rather impressive, and the person I spoke to on the phone claimed they do 30 to 40 cakes each week! This must be the most awesome bakery in the state, right?
Wrong. First of all, they were nearly impossible to get in touch with. They practically refused to work with me via email (which is my preferred method of doing business), and the guy (David) who eventually did respond barely speaks English. Their price quote seemed reasonable, except that they don't really offer delivery or cake service and their shop is about an hour away from my venue. They charged us $50 to come in and taste the cake, which we weren't thrilled about but they will apply the cost of the tasting toward your booking if you sign a contract. We figured that if they get such rave reviews and do so much business, we'll probably fall in love with them and sign right away, right?
Wrong again. When we arrived at the Bamboo Bakery (which is a tiny, cluttered shop located in a rather sketchy part of town), David was nowhere to be found. Granted, we were about fifteen minutes early, but we were happy to wait if he was busy with other clients or something. A younger employee, Nelson, (thankfully with a much better grasp of the English language) asked us to wander around and look at the many example cakes that were more strewn about than displayed throughout the shop. I was a little bit disappointed in seeing the display cakes up close. They didn't look nearly as nice as they had on the website. While we looked around, Nelson set up a table for us with the seven most popular cake and filling combinations for us to try. The slivers, I mean, slices, were tiny, about the size of a dollar bill folded in fourths and maybe a quarter of an inch thick. The yummiest thing on the plate was honestly the whipped cream frosting. Of the seven different kinds of cake and filling, each of us found one or two to be "ok," but none of them were what we would call "good," definitely not good enough to spend hundreds of dollars on. The cakes were shockingly bland and we could taste the lard in the fillings. While we were eating, Nelson (who I will say was very nice and professional) told us that he would answer any questions we had and David would come out when we were ready to talk about price. I thought that was very unprofessional of David, since he was the one who I'd been dealing with on the phone and via email up to that point. We'd paid $50 for this tasting, and he couldn't even be bothered to come out from the back to speak to us unless we were going to sign a contract. In no way did we recieve $50 worth of cake, service, or attention.
Nelson came back when we were done and started asking about what kind of cake we wanted. I told him that actually, I had already sent David a picture of what we wanted, but not to bother because we didn't like anything well enough to place an order and I didn't want to waste any more of their (or our) time. He looked shocked as we thanked him and left, but I wasn't about to sit there and haggle price on something I wouldn't have crossed the street to pick up for free.
So, I'm left scratching my head as to how in the world Bamboo Bakery gets such rave reviews. Overall, I would probably give them a 3 out of 10, and it's only that high of a rating because Nelson was so nice and no one got food poisoning.
