Cafe of Joy : A Little Piece of Europe in Whitefield

Cafe of Joy is a beautiful cafe which reminds me of Europe!

Driving down the Whitefield main road (also known as Varthur road I think, the one that leads to Forum Value Mall from Marathalli) one can almost miss “Cafe of Joy”.  With a small board, it is overshadowed by the big and loud brother “Bhagini” next door. But once you spot it, that is the moment joy begins. Yes yes, I know it sounds cheesy but heck today is Valentine’s Day, I am not doing a post full of hearts. I bet I can at least be cheesy in what I write 😉

So you spot a small white board which leads to a small, quaint cafe little place, done up in white and lavender, pretty little white pots to pour milk, or the cow butter dishes or the cow which holds the gorgeous lavender flowers, Cafe of Joy defines what quaint should be. Cafe of Joy’s ambiance manages to instantly transport one to Germany and if one lets go of the honks from the main road and add some live symphonies being played and you can fool yourself that you are sitting in Germany indeed.

 

 

Once we settled down, the enthusiastic owner of the cafe Joy herself (yes that is where the name comes from) came to our order to take the order and explain what is available on the menu today. Apart from the gorgeous looking breads and some desserts, they serve according to the whiteboard menu of the day. It is a whiteboard and not black though I personally think the black board would have added so much charm to the place. We ordered our stuff and she explained to us that the dishes will take time since they are making everything from scratch on order which was a good warning since we were all starving and hence we decided to start with a bread basket.

She selected the breads and got us a Brioche, fitness bread and cinnamon roll. I absolutely loved the brioche, brilliantly made, the fitness bread made of 5 grains and carrot was a delight to eat too but for me the cinnamon roll fell flat on its face. First it looked white and there wasn’t any of that beautiful brown color that cinnamon roll should have, there was cinnamon in the dough rather than filling but for me personally it wasn’t enough, plus the inside of the bread just felt like a clumpy mass. My friends teased me that it’s because I don’t like anyone else’s cinnamon rolls but the other two bakers on the table agreed with me after they stopped pulling my leg.

 

 

Post the bread basket, we moved on to dish that stole my heart (yes yes, Valentine excuse again), “Peppered Pork and Bacon Crumble” and yes I guess by now you know why, fabulously spiced pork which was cooked just right and to die for bacon crumble. Every bite I took I was cursing myself that why didn’t I ever think of doing a bacon crumble for something, a rich dish though but yummy indeed.

 

 

We also ordered “Flammkuchen” for the mains, which also is popularly known as the “the other pizza”, its a dish which is said to have its origins in France knowns as “tarte flambée”  and is basically bread dough rolled out very thin in the shape of a rectangle covered with onions and other toppings. The basic difference between pizza and flamkuchen being the use of sauce of cheese.

 

 

We ordered a “Ham and onion flammkuchen” which had everything set for it to be fab and it was but the one that very pleasantly surprised me was the veg one, “Caramelized Onion and Bell Pepper Flamkuchen“, oh it was delight in every bite and I actually prefered that over the ham one, one of the reason could be caramelized onions that I absolutely love.

 

 

The four of us were pretty much full after the above order. The flamkuchen’s are pretty filling without being too heavy but we now that we were at the German cafe we couldn’t have gone without the desserts, could we? But you know while I am writing this review, I am wishing we would have because the desserts disappointed most of us. We ordered a “Sacher Torte” and a “Blueberry Cheesecake“, the cheesecake came to the table first. Such a beautiful looking thing, perfectly baked with white chocolate shavings on top, we took a bite and though it wasn’t bad but something was a miss, two of us looked at each other and we instantly knew the feeling is common.

There was this sticky aftertaste that cheesecake had, we left it and took a bite of the Sacher torte which had arrived by then and we instantly went like, OMG! this is so wrong. For me, a sacher torte is a beauty beyond imagination. It needs to have that perfect finish, the gloss which is actually reflects like a mirror and when u bite into it you should get only chocolate gooey-ness and goodness, but this lacked in finish as well as the texture was so wrong. The cake was crumbling and I think had too much sugar syrup sprinkled on it which resulted in a limp case rather than a moist one. It was sad that four of us couldn’t finish the not so big helping of the Sacher. After eating the Sacher, we actually went back and finished the cheesecake.

 

 

Summary : Gorgeous quaint little cafe with great breads and a lovely lunch, just skip the dessert till they get their act together 🙂

Café of Joy.

No.8, Siddhapura,

(Next to Bhagini Iris restaurant)

Whitefield Main Road,

Bangalore.

Ph: +91 9886329015.

Parking: In the empty plot next door/ On the street.