Cake Ya - worth the drive?

Restaurant: Cake-Ya

Cuisine: Japanese Dessert

Area: Port Moody, BC

Address: 2415 Clarke Street

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent

Food: 4.5

Service: 4

Price: Fair-Expensive

One thing that I (Grace) hate about not being able to drive myself yet is that I can’t go to all the restaurants and bakeries that we want to go!! Cake-Ya had been one of the places that we really have wanted to go since like forever!! We been nagging and nagging my dad to take us there but he always responds like “it’s too far!” Finally today my dad said “let’s go to that cake place in Port Moody” We can finally go to the place that we could only dream of!!!!

Cake-Ya is a small Japanese bakery in Port Moody that specialized in Japanese homemade desserts. It is small bakery, well I couldn’t really call it a bakery it’s more like a kitchen with a glass case to display the desserts, which is run by 2 people. There is no seating area so you either had to eat outside, the car or the park. They are famous for their Japanese pudding so of course that’s what we got!

We got to Cake-Ya just when they opened so there wasn’t a lot out especially the pudding, we really wanted to try the matcha flavored pudding but they didn’t make them yet :( The service was really good, they were kind and answered all our questions and let us take pictures of the shop! They also let us sample some cheesecake, original and chocolate cake, they were really good!

On the table:   

Red Bean Daifuku ($1.00 each) we got this right when they made this because we came around 11:20 but we had to wait for 10 minutes but it was totally worth it for us! But our grandpa and grandma was saying how they can make it themselves and that it was expensive, than make it for us!! Instead of saying it!! >:( Anyways the daifuku was big and was filled with lots red bean! The mochi was chewy and soft. The red beans soft and a little chunky and it wasn’t too sweet like we find sometime in some mochi. They also gave us little bags to put our daifuku in.
 

Matcha Roll Cake ($6.00) the matcha roll cake was the favorite of the day! The roll was a matcha sponge cake with cream and red beans in the middle. The sponge cake had a strong matcha flavor that we really liked and it was airy, soft and moist! The cream was a little dense and clumpy, we wished it was a little fluffier also it wasn’t too sweet like some other places. There was a lot of red bean and it was really smooth and soft. We think the cake would have been better if there was more sponge cake and less cream.

 

For the pudding we bought 3 kinds. Original, Coffee, and Black Sesame.

Original Cream Caramel ($2.25 for one, $12.00 for 6). The cream caramel they make isn’t baked but steamed and it comes in a plastic cup. The original was creamy, silky smooth, and not too sweet and it also had an eggy flavor. We found it a little heavy and could have been lighter. I think we found it like that because we went too early and it might have been from yesterday or something like that. The caramel was at the bottom and it was a brown sugar caramel, it was more liquid like but was good.

Coffee Cream Caramel ($2.50 for one, $13.50 for 6). We couldn’t really comment about this since we don’t like coffee but our dad said it was good and had a lot of coffee flavor.

Sesame Cream Caramel ($2.50 for 1, $13.50 for 6) this cream caramel we got right out of the steamer! It was creamy and had a lot of sesame flavor. We can’t say too much about since we only got a bite out of it before it got gobbled up by someone.

Okinawa Shortbread – Black Sesame ($1.75 for a pack of 4 cookies). The cookies were really fine and tender and it was really soft and crumbly. It practically just melts in your mouth. It had a strong sesame flavor but not too strong to the point of overpowering. It was sweet and a dry just like shortbread cookies are. It was really good, the best sesame cookies we ever had.

Overall we really liked the place but we didn't think it was worth the drive. The food was delicious but you can get delicious food in Vancouver and Richmond too!  The service was really good and they answered all our questions and we got to sample some of the cheesecake and chocolate cheesecake which was delicious! Next time we would totally come to get some! We would definitely come back for the roll cake and the other pudding flavors but only if we’re in the area.