Bakeries are evolving along with everything else. They are much more sophisticated than traditional bakeries and are open far less hours in the day. Willa Jean bridges the gap between traditional bakeries and newfangled ones. It is definitely hip but also traditional. And it serves a full breakfast with a real menu.
I was in the neighborhood today and popped into Willa Jean, an old favorite of ours. (Ours meaning Mary Leigh and me, because bakeries as a place to eat never really occurred to Tom. I went to the pickup counter and ordered a quiche and a breakfast sandwich, skipping the sweet things. The brownie looked the same as did the muffins and cookies. Willa Jean has a great chocolate chip cookie, and a dense brownie, which they took a while to offer. When Willa Jean first opened I was surprised at how little chocolate was on the menu. Even now, I think the brownie is the only straight chocolate thing.
There were two choices for the quiche: meat or vegetarian. The breakfast sandwich had two meat choices: sausage or bacon. I got the meat quiche and the bacon croissant breakfast sandwich.
This is the second breakfast sandwich I have gotten where the scrambled eggs are a perfect circle, appearing to have been poured into a mold. Is this a trend? A breakfast sandwich used to be messier, with a fried egg dripping yolk down the sides. Scrambled eggs in these recent sandwiches are fluffy and thick, and perfectly round.
The ones on the plate at WiIla Jean today were a croissant for a bun, with eggs and melted cheddar cheese. Bacon peeked out of the sides in a criss-cross fashion. On the other half of the sandwiches the meat was sausage. And the quiche was bacon with red potatoes studded throughout.
This quiche had a thin but impossibly flaky crust and a texture that I like, which means it was not the soft and fluffy French style. I like an Americanized quiche that is a little more well done and filled with things. This one had pieces of bacon and red potatoes with the skin on, as well as cheese. It was a mild flavor with large chunks of soft potato and the bacon, both plentiful throughout.
With so many places in the post-COVID-era settling in at a little less than what they were before COVID changed everything, it’s heartening to see anyone maintaining the same standards they always had. Willa Jean seems to be the same place it was over ten years ago, when it set the bar for a flood of the new bakeries that have all upped the game on the traditional sweet and savory bounty from early morning ovens.
