Karolinka In & Around Bulgaria

Me drinking coffee at Ma Baker

Yesterday I met up with my friend P. for coffee. It was great to catch up with him.

We shocked ourselves to discover that we hadn’t seen each other since my Fasksgiving party. This resulted in lots of wishes for Christmas and the New Year and a lot of different things that we had to catch-up on.

I’d suggested that we check out this new(-ish) bakery and cafe that I’d heard about and read about near NDK called Ma Baker. Sometimes I am nervous about taking friends to a place I’ve never been before. I don’t like to stake my name on it before I’ve tried it out. Because really, what if I’ve talked it up and the coffee stinks or the people working there are mean? What if the place isn’t actually cute? What if there’s no place to sit?

Worse yet. What if it’s just plain-old-every-day bad and you’ve invited a friend to check it out with you?! What are you supposed to do then?!

Luckily, none of these things happened to be the case. The interior of the the shop is light and open. The espresso machine is actually on an island in the middle of the room. The cafe smelled of baking bread and richly roasted coffee beans.

Sweets at Ma Baker

I walked in and given the difference in temperature between the outdoors and the indoors my glasses fogged up immediately. It took me a couple of minutes to get my glasses to a place where I could see. I don’t think P. realized what was going on because he kept asking me: where do you want to sit and I kept telling him: pick I can’t really see right now without my glasses on, you pick. He then politely asks me: how’s this? Even though I am still rubbing my glasses to warm them up, I figure that there aren’t any bad seats in the bakery so I say: great.

Inside Ma Baker

Really there probably aren’t seats for more than 12-14 people anyway so what are the chances of getting a bad one? I noticed that there also seems to be a space for tables and chairs outside the cafe during the spring and summer which is nice but that’s a distant dream at this point.

Newspapers at Ma Baker

The shop is customer driven. You order at the counter, you take your treat/snack/sweets to your seat and you get your drink when they call out the order. I like this but I have to say, it seems a tiny bit silly given how small the shop actually is. I think that the girl who made our drinks walked further to the mini-island for drink pick-up than she would have walked if she put them down at our table. This said, I also think it’s silly when little cafes have two or three women working at them as waitresses when I could just as easily order a drink for myself at the bar and take it to a table myself. (I am apparently not that easy to please.)

So the coffee was great. I, of course, had a cappuccino. It was hot, hot. The milk was well steamed and the espresso finished on a slightly sweet note rather than a bitter overly roasted note, as so often happens in Sofia. P. lamented at the price of the small cappuccino–I think it was around 2.50 leva. This happens when you get used to paying 1 leva for espressos in hole-in-the-wall cafes around the city but I will say this, you get what you pay for in these little cafes.

P. and his cookie

P. ordered a very big chocolate chip cookie and I went with a slice of the raspberry tart. The chocolate chip cookie was good. It had plenty of chocolate and a little hint of vanilla to it. The problem in my mind is this: the cookie was crispy. I want a slightly chewy chocolate chip cookie. I want the edges to be a little crispy and the middle to be soft still. Bulgarians and I don’t see eye to eye on this matter. I’ve never had a chocolate chip cookie that does what I am looking for in this country–good thing I know how to make my own.

Tart and cookie at Ma Baker

I had the slice of raspberry tart (about 3.50 leva). It was delicious. The crust was shortbread-esque. The raspberry filling was very raspberry-y with a hint of sweet but it was definitely not the cloying sweat of raspberry jam and on top there was a light layer of shaved almond. This is the kind of dessert that you don’t really want to share but you do because as a friend, it’s the right thing to do.

We talked for a long time and then out the way out bought baguettes (1.60 each). The baguettes came fresh out of the oven while we were talking and as soon as I saw that I knew that I had to have one. It was about all I could do not to take a big bite out of my baguette on the metro on the way home. The way a baguette hangs out of the end of its bag would make it so easy to do. The first thing I did when I got home was to slice a large piece off. I’m happy to tell you this: the baguette rivaled any of those that I ate in Paris a week ago. The outside was dense and slightly crispy and the middle was chewy and airy. Perfection.

Ma Baker next to NDK

Now while I’d love to have this bakery in Mladost 1A, I am rather glad Ma Baker is downtown next to NDK (at 7 Skobelev Blvd) as this means I can’t go everyday even if I wanted to which for the record I do.

The one annoying thing is that Ma Baker doesn’t seem to have a website. They do have a Facebook profile but really they should have their own page with information like their street address, phone number, hours and the like.

Tags: Bakery, Sofia