A Bakery Renovation

At Granville Island, you don’t usu­al­ly see one of the ven­dors rebuild­ing their stalls (or booths, or what­ev­er it is they call their space). It’s espe­cial­ly unusu­al to see one of the more equip­ment-inten­sive estab­lish­ments doing big changes, like the 2 fish ven­dors, the dairy stall, the 2 Ital­ian food ven­dors, or one of the 2 con­fec­tion­ers. So it was pret­ty shock­ing to see Stu­ar­t’s Bak­ery com­plete­ly dis­as­sem­bled and what looked like years of crumbs that had fall­en between the pas­try cas­es and oth­er bits of the floor behind yel­low tape and traf­fic cones.

I asked one of the work­men if the bak­ery had gone out of busi­ness or if this was just a ren­o­va­tion and he anx­ious­ly assured me that Stu­ar­t’s was doing just fine, and don’t wor­ry, they’ll be back after the work is done.

Of the three bak­eries at Granville Island, I like each for some­thing dif­fer­ent: Ter­ra Breads is the near­ly leg­endary arti­sanal bread shop that boasts large sour­dough bagettes and incred­i­ble blue­ber­ry bread. Just out­side the mar­ket form­ing a back­drop to the whim­si­cal­ly named ‘Tri­an­gle Square’, “La Baguette et L’Echalote” is where I like to get crois­sants and the occa­sion­al half-baked loaf to fin­ish at the oven at home. Stu­ar­t’s was where I pre­ferred to get sta­ple breads; a good, dense white bread loaf or raisin bread, some superb fresh home­made pitas, and every once in a while, a piece of pas­try or pie. It was the most old fash­ioned of the three and despite the fact that it was a lit­tle dowdy, it nev­er­the­less fre­quent­ly had a line (although rarely as long as the ones at Ter­ra Breads). Again, despite the fact that I’m speak­ing of it in the past tense, Stu­ar­t’s is not gone; It’s just being redone. I will be very sur­prised if the new incar­na­tion changes any­thing but the dis­plays and sig­nage. I’m sure that there are a few things that nev­er change, and prob­a­bly shouldn’t.