Watered Down Chocolate Milk

Words by: Saakhi Anand

April 18th, 2021
1.5/5

Inside Tatte Bakery and Café, the aesthically pleasing café around Boston.

Picture this: It’s a hot, summer day in Boston as a tourist. You are walking around
Back Bay when you see a cute coffee shop you can get stop by and get something
to eat.

You enter and it’s all white. White bricks, white chandeliers, white tiling. You feel
content with this place and are excited to munch on something that looks super
appetizing. You don’t know want you want to eat, so you opt for something small
such as a pastry and a coffee. You try a bite of the stale, old tart that you just
bought and think, “I just wasted $14 on a small coffee and a pastry that isn’t
good.” That’s the exact thought I had when I went to Tatte Bakery & Café.
When trying this café, I visited the Northeastern location, being a student there.
Weirdly enough, the place is always packed with students that are in desperate
need of coffee. The café is located near many of the dormitories, so the place is
always packed with students. Although this café is filled with students, Tatte
Bakery & Café lacks in many things, but specifically, price, customer service, and
food quality.

Boston is a college city that has around 152,000 students. Students that are sleep
deprived and rely on coffee to energize themselves. There is great, but less known,
cafés around the city such as Blue Bottle Coffee and Pavement Coffeehouse. Those
coffee shops have better and significantly cheaper coffee that is available for
anyone that is looking for a recharge.

The airy and open aesthetic that Blue Bottle Coffee has.

This aesthetically pleasing café has fifteen locations in Boston, including

university campuses such as Northeastern, Berklee College of Music, Emerson,
Harvard, and others, but why? This expensive cafe shouldn’t be in places where
students can barely afford the private-university tuition, let alone a $7 coffee.

The hot summer day I went there, I wanted a coffee. I opted for a small-iced
mocha where I was in need for something cold. Lucky for me, ¾ of the cup
consisted of ice which made the “coffee” taste like water. Now you may ask, why
quotation marks around coffee. Well, when I was younger, I used to drink milk
with Hershey’s syrup and that’s exactly what I got when I ordered a mocha from
Tatte’s, except I had more ice than actual coffee. After drinking my, exactly, seven
sips of my coffee, I felt less energized and actually felt a hole burnt in my wallet
from the overpriced coffee I had just bought.

Tatte, please let me know why I ordered a salad for $12.50 which consisted of
lettuce and seeds. My sister, at the time who was vegan, tried to substitute the goat
cheese for something when the staff member was rude and unaccommodating
about it. P.S if you want to add avocado to your salad, you’re going to have to pay
an extra $3! Skip out on the cauliflower sandwich too, it was two pieces of pita
bread with mashed cauliflower with no flavor. Your tastebuds and wallet will
thank me.

A slice of bread, a piece of meat, seven pieces of leaves, and three slices of apple or what Tatte
calls, a sandwich.

Lastly, it was time for dessert. I was very excited to have something sweet after my
coffee had finished at the speed of light and my disappointing salad and sandwich.
Each pastry looked good, but once I had paid the bill, my jaw dropped; the desserts
range from $7+. I had ordered a fruit tart and a nut tart and with what I paid, I
thought I was getting three, but one was packed. I had never been so shocked in
my entire life. Not going to lie, the fruit tart was good. On the other hand, the nut
tart may have had to send me to the dentist.
Tatte, what’s your wire number? I’m going to be sending you my dentist bill
because the caramel nut tart was inedible. It was gooey, but the kind that gets stuck
in between your teeth and stays there for days. It was hard, where you may have
mistaken a chestnut for your tooth. It was dry, where I felt like I was eating a tart
from four days ago.

A $7 mini, inedible tart.

Boston Globe reviewers, Devra First and Kara Baskin, were comparing Flour to
Tatte to see what café was better. They say that Tatte’s ordering process is more
“calming and more orderly,” but foodwise it would go to Flour. In addition, food
blogger, Rachel, says that the chocolate tarts are just something to look at, but not
anything to be ordered again. As much as I’d like to say that Tatte had a good
ordering process, I can’t. The staff was unbelievably rude and unhelpful alongside
with untasteful food.

MY FINAL TAKE:
I have no idea where and who is spending money at Tatte’s, but don’t. If you don’t
mind wasting your money just for an aesthetic, then go ahead, but it isn’t worth it.
You are likely to find a coffee shop on any corner or even a Dunkin’ or Starbucks,
so what I’d recommend is to go there. Tatte Bakery & Café is an overpriced,
tasteless café that also has terrible customer service. Do. Not. Go.

Works Cited

Blumenthal, Rachel Leah. “Boston's Second Blue Bottle Coffee Opens This Weekend.” Eater
Boston, Eater Boston, 8 May 2018, boston.eater.com/2018/5/8/17332860/blue-bottle-
coffee-federal-street-boston.

Boston by the Numbers, Boston Redevelopment Office, 2010.

“Cafes: Blue Bottle Coffee Co.” Cafes | Blue Bottle Coffee Co.,
bluebottlecoffee.com/cafes#boston.

“Coffee Shop and Roaster Boston.” Pavement Coffeehouse, pavementcoffeehouse.com/.

First, Devra, and Kara Baskin. “We Taste Tested Flour and Tatte. Here's How It Went - The
Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com, The Boston Globe, 24 Apr. 2019,
www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/food-dining/2019/04/23/taste-tested-flour-and-tatte-here-
how-they-stack/DCUS1BG6ohJEcutvEqcP4O/story.html.

Hatic, Dana. “Tatte Adds Stunning Pastries to the Berklee Campus Today.” Eater Boston, Eater
Boston, 10 July 2019, boston.eater.com/2019/7/10/20688760/tatte-bakery-cafe-berklee-
opening.

Rachel. “Food Journal #5: Boston.” Bad Food Blog, 19 Aug. 2018,
badfoodblog.com/2018/08/19/food-journal-5-boston/.

“Tatte Bakery & Cafe: Elegant Comfort Food - Desserts - Coffee: Menus.” Tatte Bakery and
Cafe, tattebakery.com/menus/.

“Tatte Bakery & Cafe: Elegant Comfort Food - Desserts - Coffee: Locations in Boston.” Tatte
Bakery and Cafe, https://tattebakery.com/boston/.