Let them eat cake

No more delicious, buttery croissants. No more chocolate-orange scones. Those were the tear-stained, pastry-deprived thoughts of Bittersweet Bistro regulars when the favorite South Hill bakery shuttered its doors last June.

Gina Garcia, who ran Bittersweet, says not to fret: Those same croissants and scones will live happily again in your belly — you just have to stick it out until the first of the year. That’s when she plans to start firing up the ovens at Cake, a bakery being opened by Chaps Coffee Company’s owner, Celeste Shaw. Cake will open in a new 3,000-square-foot space connected to Chaps — baking all of the bread sold at Chaps and offering some of the delicious treats you could get at Bittersweet.

Garcia says that she and Shaw have been talking for years about collaborating on a bakery. When Bittersweet closed “for a number of reasons,” they started to get serious.

Cake won’t be the one-stop crèpe shop that Bittersweet was — they’ll leave the bistro end of things to Chaps. But Garcia says that Cake will be the spot for “bread you can’t find anywhere in town” — baguettes, sweet breads, pan loaves that are “different and really high-quality.”

Garcia, who’ll serve as the pastry chef for Cake, says that Shaw’s vision will enable her bakers to do things they couldn’t at Bittersweet, including top-notch ovens and high-end training — not to mention a huge, brand new space.

“We were trying to do so much in a small space up at Bittersweet. This is going to broaden our horizons even more,” she says.

More details to come — but Garcia promises to have those chocolate orange scones from Bittersweet on the menu.

“We sold the crud out of those things,” she says. — LEAH SOTTILE

Chaps, 4237 S. Cheney-Spokane Rd., is open Tues 11 am–3 pm; Wed–Thurs 11 am–3 pm and 4:30–close; and Fri–Sun 7:30 am–3 pm and 4:30–close. Call 624-4182.