Pullout Jan 28, 2015 at 4:00 am

I Hate to Be the One to Tell You This, but Your Cake Is Terrible

Comments

1
You're an idiot. Reevaluate your life and your cake eating skills.
3
This article is absolutely useless. You're just complaining about how much the cake in America is not like cake in Vienna. No one cares.

At least post a family recipe or something.
4
Welcome to Seattle!

I've never been a cake fan (I'm all about the pie) but perhaps I need to go to Vienna and enjoy real cake.
5
Where you getting your Wienerschnitzel around here?
6
@1- You ought to listen to this: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-ar…
7
Simply Desserts in Fremont! Go now!
8
I may need to visit Vienna and eat cake... Thank you for the idea!
9
RAINBOW CHIP 4 LYFE!
10
If you want decent cake in these parts, you need to go to a Chinese or Vietnamese or Filipino bakery.
11
I'll never understand people who go halfway around the world just to complain about it not being home. When I go to Shanghai, I don't stubbornly try to find a decent corndog and complain because there isn't a decent corndog, I look for things to try and do I couldn't do at home.
12
Austrians, amirite?
13
This post is one of the funniest and most perceptive I have ever read on SLOG.
Our friend from Vienna -- and we do welcome him! -- reminds us that Seattle is NOT Vienna!
We'd forgotten!!! We thought this town was filled with white horses and schnitzel!

Honestly, it is cute. Hope you enjoy Seattle. Maybe you'd like a Hostess Cupcake? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostess_Cup…
14
Yeah I'mma need a recipe..how are we supposed to know what we're missing out on?
15
At the very least, a picture of what the author is accustomed to eating.
16
Confused by the complaint that our cake is "soft and spongy". You were looking for dense and dry?
17
Now I'm curious what Austrian cake tastes like and if I'd like it.
19
You commenters sound like a bunch of Republicans. "If you don't like it here, sod off back to wherever you came from".

As a fellow European, I totally get what is to be hated about American cake. Exhibit A: Hostess Twinkies. The single nastiest thing to eat in America apart from corndogs.
20
Vienna is a wonderful city. I can appreciate how Seattle would seem to be a culinary come-down.
21
You all need to chill and realize that this is supposed to be funny and it is.

Most American cakes are truly awful, awful things because they're made using shitty ingredients, like crisco and margarine, and taste like nothing.

If someone asks me what kind of cake I want for my birthday, the answer is obvious. Pie.
22
πŸ˜•There used to be a European Bakery on the Ave. I went away for 3 yrs after college. Came back and it was gone!😣.Now there's only sugar and dough. Lots and lots and lots of sugar.
There's a worse crime being perpetrated however, have you eaten the "croissants"? The "french" bread? Where are the holes?
23
I always find these articles written by "Europeans" amusing, because they don't really try all that hard to make them convincing.
25
Why is that every Charles Mudede column reads exactly the same, even when he is pretending to be Austrian?
26
Hello visitor from Vienna. Welcome to Seattle.

if you're looking for some good cake try Borrachinis Bakery on Rainier Ave
27
Best cake in Seattle: White chocolate strawberry cake from Simply Desserts in Fremont. Poster #7 is entirely correct, go now!

While I almost surely need to give Austria a second chance, I have to say I've been to Europe more times than I can count, and I found people in Vienna to be snobby and singularly unpleasant. It is a lovely city, the food, wine and beer were delicious, but I ultimately was left a bit cold. My loss I guess. Here's for a better introduction to your beautiful city for my second visit, whenever that may come. Until then, enjoy good seafood in lovely Seattle.
28
It's just boring hearing a European complain about American bread, cake, chocolate, beer, pasta, etc.
29
I suspect the cakes at Dilettante would rate at least a "so-so" from you, author. But yeah, it must be hard, coming from the city that pretty much invented cake. There's no way you could have realistic standards for the rest of the world with that as your frame of reference. (You think Seattle's cake is bad? Go to Wenatchee and look for cake.)

BTW, if you happen to venture down to Portland, I recommend Pix Patisserie. The influence there is French more than Viennese, and they are pretty gleeful about the ones that are too much too much, but their Amelie won a medal in France, and their Queen of Sheba cake seems like something you'd appreciate.
30
Wow, what an obnoxious rant. Then again, par for the course for The Stranger, the paper of record for self-important rants.
31
Well, a chance to add to the "poo-poo" on this article, which was nothing but a rant about how Seattle is not Vienna. We're sorry that our Pacific Northwest style doesn't suit your rustic European recipes. Perhaps if you gave some sort of comparison about what was actually different about our cakes versus yours, this article may have carried a shred of use. However, the lack of comparison makes these words useless...nothing more than complaints without basis for comparison.

Nothing to see here, folks. Let's move on.
32
try marrying an Austrian
33
So you thought the cake at QFC was horrible, went to a decent bakery, and liked 2 out of the 3 you tried. What was this article about again?
34
Long time stranger reader, first time commenter.

I live in West Seattle, home of the first Bakery Nouveau and I married an Austrian. As I type this, I am eating a home made yeast bun, making espresso, my location? The attic apartment at a farmhouse in Aigen, population 800ish, in the Austrian alps.

I am a zealous convert to the church of Austrian cake. And this person is exactly right. Bakery Nouveau is the only place I've eaten cake that even comes close to Austrian standards. Seattle cake IS (mostly) terrible.
35
Yeah, well, your sausages are inadequate
36
Having lived in Seattle and visited Vienna, I have to agree that Austrian cakes are magical things. American cakes tend to be very sweet (especially the icing and fillings); Austrian cakes, well, I don't know what they do but they're amazing. I recall walking around Vienna photographing bakery windows because of the stunning cake displays---it was cake porn! Those who commented here spewing "who cares?" need to stop and think about the simple pleasures in life: a well-made cake is one of them.
37
Having lived in Seattle and visited Vienna, I have to agree that Austrian cakes are magical things. American cakes tend to be very sweet (especially the icing and fillings); Austrian cakes, well, I don't know what they do but they're amazing. I recall walking around Vienna photographing bakery windows because of the stunning cake displays---it was cake porn! Those who commented here spewing "who cares?" need to stop and think about the simple pleasures in life: a well-made cake is one of them.
38
You know what they say..."you can't have your cake and eat it too!" Here's the bottom line pal - your first mistake was coming to Seattle looking to replace your mama's cake. Go home if you want mama's cake! Everyone knows you can never replace something you grew up on. Enjoy Seattle for what it is - your new home. For now. And besides you can always GO HOME!
39
I realize you're trying to whitewash the newcomer influx with a shade of ambiguity by choosing this angle for a column. You're trying to make our non-local hatred seem silly, pointless, and like it's all relative who lives here. But should we really be ambiguous about the fact that real artists, musicians and other people who actually have something to offer this city (besides spending money on dull shit) are being priced out of it? That the real locals are being priced out? Seattle isn't even full of Seattleites anymore. It's full of out-of-state, arrogant trust fund babies who read Kurt Cobain's wikipedia article, and weren't even alive yet when he died; not the people who actually knew him and remember what it felt like around here back then. Doesn't that strike you as flawed? As a loss of something? Or that nearly every fundamental, independently-owned venue and business on Capitol Hill, that made the culture around here, has been eliminated or sanitized to the point of irrelevancy? It's making Capitol Hill irrelevant. The rich kids wanna come in and play with us. But they're so spoiled, blind and ignorant that they can't see they've crushed the sand castle under their feet.

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