Filipino Bakery Cafe & Market Takeaway. Buns That Are Breads And Other Fun Stuff. Ube bread was a 6.9 / 10 bun for me. They sell in a six-pack of ube bread for $5.99, directly inline on a per oz basis with other buns in the area. You need to warm it up at home to get the full flavor. I highly recommend the oven over the microwave. Adobo pork bread is worth having once to experience the flavor. Unfortunately, it is not my favorite bakery in an area with better options very close by.
Note: this review revolves around the bakery and pastry aspect of the establishment. They serve a full lunch menu I didn't try besides the adobo pork bread.
The service was super helpful. The cashier directed me to their recommendations past the required Ube bread. Parking is easy in a big lot. I had to pay attention to make the final turn into the lot, as the entrance was a bit hidden behind a hill near a traffic light.
Filipino Bakery Cafe & Market Experience Summary
As part of my search for quality pastries around St. Louis, I made my next stop at the Filipino Bakery. It's in Maryland Heights, just past the Foundry Bakery.
When I recommended the Foundry Bakery on Reddit, I got a bunch of people saying that the Filipino market was worth trying.
Unfortunately, I was not at all impressed with the food here.
My review is limited to the buns I had. Note: I call them buns, but they refer to them as "bread." I'll use both terms interchangeably since buns are how I think about them.
I did not enjoy these buns as much as I did the taro buns at the Foundry Bakery, nor as much as the buns that I get at Wei Hong Bakery in University City.
You get six buns for $6, so a buck a bun, but they're considerably smaller than the ones you'll get at other places. Two of them basically equal the weight of a bun at both Wei Hong and the Foundry.
The Ube bun was my favorite of the three. I'd give it a high six, like a 6.9 / 10, as it's sweet and starchy, but the Ube doesn't come through as hard as I'd want. The bread is lovely but not distinctly standalone delicious.
I'd take a bigger bun with more filling that really has the ube come through, more like the buns at the previously mentioned places.
The Filipino Bakery has more to offer, including a lunch menu and mini-grocery store, but the buns didn't do it for me.
The Food At Filipino Bakery Cafe & Market
To put a bow on this Ube bread, it is good but not great, and there's just better stuff very close by on this front. The Ube filling is the strongest part of the bun. It has a slight taro-y sweetness that gives it more of a potato-y mouthfeel. The texture and flavor are correct; there's just not enough of the flavor.
Pump this up and make it bigger.
The bread is sweet but not distinct. It's not quite fluffy or airy. Just missing slightly on a lot of aspects that make me enjoy a bun.
Lastly, you have to heat this Ube bread up. It gets 2-3x better after being in the oven for 2-3 minutes. The heat lightens up the texture of both the bread and the filling. It brings out the flavor of both.
Without the heat, they come off chewy and dense.
You get six for $5.99. The buns weigh 2.7 oz each, compared to 6.2 oz for the $2.10 bun at the Foundry down the road.
And that would be my biggest rec here. Make the buns bigger and charge more instead of making them bite-sized.
The Pandesal and Adobo
The other two buns I had were the pandesal bread and Adobo bread.
The pandesal is just a plain bun with bread crumbs on top. Think of it as a Hawaiian roll. You get six of these for $4.99. This bun lets you taste just the bread. It has a lot of potential, but it doesn't quite deliver. You can compare it to the sweet top bun at Wei Hong, which lives up to the potential of plain bread. It has so much more flavor throughout. Even Haw
Then I had the adobo pork bun for $3.99. The pork was actually quite good. It had the flavor of pork belly and had that kind of size and texture. Since it's filled with pork, it's more of a savory bun for lunchtime than breakfast. It's good enough that I'd have one if you gave it to me, but I don't think I'd order it again. But this size and style of bun would be more in line with what I think they should do with all their other buns.
At least for my taste.
As another point of reference, my eight-year-old son, who loves the Foundry and Wei Hong buns, didn't like any of these buns.
On a last note, I also got a Ube bread with cheese. I was hoping it would be like a cherry cheese Danish, but with ube. This one actively disappointed me to the point where I threw it out after taking two bites. For some reason, you just couldn't even taste the ube or the cheese. The spirals of cheese and ube never combined, and I was left with mostly the pandesal but without the sweetness.
Just a total miss for me.
Filipino Bakery Cafe & Market Atmosphere And Miscellaneous
The service is super friendly. I knew I would get ube bread, but I was pretty up the air past that.
I asked the cashier what they'd recommend, and they took me through the offerings and suggested the adobo bread.
I was the only one in line, and there was only one register, so I got in and out pretty quickly. Because they only had one register, it could back up during more busy times.
There's also a small grocery store attached to the back of the baked area. ,
Additionally, they have plenty of seating for a sit-down lunch. That wasn't in my cards as part
Parking At Filipino Bakery Cafe & Market
There is plenty of parking in a dedicated lot. You should pay a little attention to figuring out which turn it is off the road.
Filipino Bakery Cafe & Market Receipt
