I'm talking about Corner Bakery Cafe, a chain outpost that opened Monday, Oct. 7, at the corner of El Camino Real and Fernando Avenue in Palo Alto's Ventura neighborhood. The restaurant does breakfast, lunch and dinner all day, fast and at decent prices.
The menu is vast ? egg dishes, breakfast sandwiches, buttermilk pancakes, oatmeal, paninis, deli sandwiches, salads, pastas and soups, all of which are made to order. Picky eaters, rejoice: They're also into substitutions at Corner Bakery Cafe, so you can customize the heck out of your salad or sandwich if your heart so desires.
Oh, and the average amount of time it takes to get any one of these dishes out of the kitchen? Less than five minutes, said John Sweeney, general manager of operations for Buon Hospitality, the company that operates the Corner Bakery Cafe franchises.
Baking is also part of their game: bundt cakes, whoopie pies, hand pies, muffins, lemon bars, cookies and more. Current seasonal options include a pumpkin pound cake, gingerbread pumpkin bundt cake and pumpkin whoopie pies with buttercream filling.
The Palo Alto outpost is part of a franchise agreement between Buon Hospitality and Corner Bakery Cafe to build a whopping 32 restaurants in the Bay Area in the next seven years. Palo Alto is the third Bay location, following Pleasanton and Pleasant Hill (and 150 other franchised locations in the rest of the country).
The restaurant also offers free wifi.
Corner Bakery Cafe: 3375 El Camino Real, Palo Alto. 650-843-0676. www.cornerbakerycafe.com
