Cafe Au Bon Pain and A Yummy Mugcake

Cafe Au Bon Pain at Kormangala is definitely a place for good bread, as its name suggests!

Situated right at the busiest signal of Kormangala (yup yup, I am talking about the Sony World signal with Taco Bell, KFC and now Chroma too on one side, and Oasis on the other, the signal is a nightmare these days specially in the weekends), standing out due to its bright yellow colour is Cafe Au Bon Pain. Bright and chirpy with a yummy burger photo outside, this cafe sure invites you right in!

The first thing that hits you when you enter Cafe Au Bon Pain is the nice and casual decor. They have very little seating on the ground floor and almost the same space on the first floor, but the place is smart and cosy. I specially liked the wall leading up which was decorated with lovely pictures.

Cafe Au Bon Pain is mostly a ‘help yourself and get billed’ kind of concept. They have trays, cups and tongs lying around and have a soup counter in which they have non veg and veg soups of the day, on the side is a juice counter which has peach and litchi iced teas,orange slush and cold coffee. The thing I really liked about them was the fact that they have small tasting glasses to sample the soup and the drinks and decide which to choose. They also give out food samples apparently, all through the day (morning usually muesli, afternoons sandwiches and evening baked goodies) and they have a rack for the baked goodies which was full of drool-worthy bagels, muffins, brownies and danish.

We started our meal with soups, a veg puff, a muffin and small samples of cold coffee and litchi iced tea and also took one helping of the couscous and chickpea salad, and I believe in all this, the star of the show were the soups and the litchi iced tea. We had taken both non veg soups (one was an Indian kind of soup with curried veggies and the other more European style) and both were brilliant, the veg puff was good too. The salad was how it should have been but somehow not to my taste, as it was a bit bland.

While we were eating this, we had ordered two sandwiches (corn and jalapeno crostini and schezwan chicken). Both sandwiches were nice, well balanced, exactly how they should have been.  By this time, our stomachs were pretty full but the dessert and the baking shelf was luring us towards it- double chocolate mousse, cappuccino  mousse, danishes, brownies! Aah, the possibilities were endless. Both of us went off with our trays and came back as happy bunnies excited about the goodies on the plate. The cappuccino mousse and the blueberry danish were to die for and I could have eaten another helping of the same too, however the brownie didn’t really match up to my expectations, it was a bit dry, may be all it needed was a quick warming, but the blueberry danish sweet, sticky and soft, just as it should have been.

On the whole a good experience. Good food, decent ambience and a place where mostly, I will go back to taste some more of the menu.

When Team Au Bon Pain mailed me sometime back announcing the opening of their Kormangala Cafe and invited me for a visit, it was the first time I had heard of them, which is surprisingly because usually I do keep a tab on Cafes in Bangalore and this, apparently is the19th cafe in general, the other branches they have in Bangalore are at ITPL, Whitefield, Indirangar and MG road .Au Bon Pain is pronounced as Oo-Bo-Pa and means the “place of the good bread” and I must say the place was quite close to its name.

Last Words.

Food – 3/5.

Ambience – 3/5.

Pricing – average for a cafe.

Parking – an issue, its a busy crossing and you will have to find your way in bylanes.

Child friendly – well yes there is no kiddie corner but on the whole the place is child friendly.

Before, I close this off, I do have the recipe to a delicious mugcake called the Nutella Cinnamon Mugcake 🙂 Talking about Nutella, have you tried the self frosting Nutella cupcakes?

Nutella Cinnamon Mugcake

Nutella Cinnamon Mugcake, done in 3 minutes!

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Ingredients

  

• 4 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 4 tablespoons sugar white granulated
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 3 tablespoons Nutella
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 1 tsp cinnamon powder
• 1/2 tsp baking powder

Instructions

 

• Combine all ingredients together
• Whisk well with a fork until smooth
• Microwave on high for 1.5 to 3 minutes till its done. Mine took about 2 minutes and the above quantity gave me two medium sized mugcakes.

Notes

If you make this, share a picture with me on twitter, instagram or Facebook? I would love to hear what you have to say about it

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!