Afters Bake House Review
Having various branches across the city, ‘Afters Bake House’ is a relatively new chain
of bakeries that offer the usual complement of cakes, pastries and savouries.
With several other well established bakeries all around town, are they worth your
money after all? (*Haha! you see what we did there? 'After all...' never mind.*)
We decided to find out.
The branch we visited was at Palarivattom, opposite the Corporation Bank Zonal Office.
Walking into the store makes you feel like you just stumbled into an underground cave or cellar. The interiors could be summarized in one word: dark. They had black tiling, walls etc. and even the tables are a very deep colour. Heck, even the serving tray we saw was deep brown!!! This monotony was only marred by a white pillar with a few other items on its shelves, reminiscent of a candle in a dark room! [The plates are white though]. The place was clean enough too. Like any bakery, the glass counters had all the various baked goods arranged neatly. Right, let us ‘shed some light’ here [Buuurn!] on the food itself!
Walking into the store makes you feel like you just stumbled into an underground cave or cellar. The interiors could be summarized in one word: dark. They had black tiling, walls etc. and even the tables are a very deep colour. Heck, even the serving tray we saw was deep brown!!! This monotony was only marred by a white pillar with a few other items on its shelves, reminiscent of a candle in a dark room! [The plates are white though]. The place was clean enough too. Like any bakery, the glass counters had all the various baked goods arranged neatly. Right, let us ‘shed some light’ here [Buuurn!] on the food itself!
Chocolate Triffle/Truffle Cake
Depending on whether you go with what the menu says or the staff [at least that day] calls it.
This one had a dark layer of chocolate on top, a mousse like light cream layer after that and layers of cake. It worked well and had good flavour. The cake was soft and spongy too.
<Some Dense chocolate cake>
Forgive us but we forgot what they named this cake. We just
pointed to it and they served it. Hey, at least we are being honest about it!
Like most places, this one was quite good with a decent layer of dense chocolate ganache on top. The outer edge had some chocolate shavings too which contributed to the texture. The
cake too was reasonably moist enough. It checks all the required boxes for
these types of pastries.
Vancho Cake
The layer of icing was rather thick, almost as much as the
cake. Unfortunately, it turned out a bit too sweet for our taste too. The worst part was that it did not seem very
fresh: it tasted like it was just on the verge of becoming rancid. Don’t get us
wrong: it was not bad just yet but it was definitely not fresh either. We do
not know whether this was a one-off incident but boy are they unlucky it
happened to be this way with when we decided to pop in.
Paneer Puffs
Puffs are just savoury snacks in which a savoury filling is enveloped by puff pastry. While it looked massive for its size, the first bite revealed the same problem everyone has and what we expected given the price point: it had too many layers, overwhelming the amount of filling inside. This is a shame because the filling itself was actually quite tasty, when it was not drowned in the vast ocean of puff pastry. It had creamy paneer [fresh cottage cheese] and a few spices which worked well together.
Chicken Vol Au Vent
The Vol Au Vent fared a bit like the puffs but in the
opposite way: the filling did not really taste or feel like chicken at all. It
was generally nice and creamy however. The pastry outside was layered and
rather well baked.
Ghee Murukku
With a segmented shape reminiscent of fusilli pasta or
caterpillars [not as gross as it sounds,
look at the photo!], the murukku had cumin (jeera) and black sesame. It also uses ghee which is a type of clarified butter, so it tasted fine.
Cuteness
aside however, it was really not that good. It was not very hard but neither crumbly enough like a good ghee murukku should be.
Overall, it is another bakery that has some good offerings.
The pastries are generally a good option to go with. The quality control on those do require more attention however, citing the above experience with the vancho cake.
The savoury baked goods we tried did not do as well though due to the imbalances mentioned earlier. Maybe if we had opted for some other items, they may have fared better but who's to know.
The savoury baked goods we tried did not do as well though due to the imbalances mentioned earlier. Maybe if we had opted for some other items, they may have fared better but who's to know.
To sum it up: if you happen to be looking for a decent
bakery in the vicinity, you cannot really go wrong with Afters, they have
reasonably good quality and the prices are competitive too. Had they opened up
a little earlier, they would have seen better days and we may have found
ourselves returning for more but as it stands now with our first experience, we probably would not go out of our way to buy something from there exclusively. That being
said, we would not mind having something else from here again either. We hope
to give them another chance soon enough and possibly find items that are really recommendable.
Type of Cuisine: Bakery
Location [Mutliple]
Opposite Corporation Bank, Heaven Plaza, MV Road, Palarivattom.
Parking: A few cars in front, should be enough.
Ambience: Dark! Clean.
Service: Good, quick.
What we liked/Recommended for:
Generally decent quality goods. Regular pricing.
Potential Shortcomings: - Some items could use a little tweaking [read more above].
- Average quality packaged items.
- Some cakes were not fresh [could be one-off]: needs QC. Will update if we ever happen to go again.
Taxes: Included in price
Phone Number:
Timings: 09:30-22:00
Restaurant Website:
On Zomato:
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