UPDATE: Rose Bakery has closed.
Not much beats curling up with a good book and a piece of cake… so I think it’s pretty clever for Hong Kong bookshop Page One to have stuck a café in their recently renovated Harbour City store – the Parisian import Rose Bakery, to be exact.
That said, I don’t think Rose Bakery’s décor is the most welcoming. It’s the same signature look in every city (London, New York, Tokyo and counting) but I found its stark industrial design rather chilly, and somewhat at odds with the traditional dark wood bookshelves lining the walls at Page One. With a bare cement floor, cold glass tables and stainless steel surfaces, it feels like a cross between a disused aircraft hangar and the Industrial Zone on The Crystal Maze (and yes, I know I seem to reference The Crystal Maze way more than the average person!).
Come 4pm and my mind immediately turns to cake… hell, who am I fooling, my mind is usually fixated on cake at all times of the day! So on our visit, afternoon tea partner-in-crime Mirander and I decided to bypass Rose Bakery’s savoury offerings of salads and quiches for cake, cake and more cake; a balanced diet means that not all the cakes we chose are chocolate ones, right?
Through The Looking Glass 