Sam Woodward
Google
Ok, so hear me out. I used to love this place. It got me through hard times during the pandemic. This was my go-to ordering spot when the world was hard and I needed something soft, gooey and overly sweet. Lately I've noticed the price increases and the slowly diminishing lack of quality. I've tried to ignore it and tried to convince myself "good things warrant selling out". I kept up the charade for longer than I should've.
Tonight I thought I would indulge my guilty pleasure as my girlfriend, who despises this place (primarily for my health concerns), is out of town. I always order a "halfsie" and then a random treat I find on the menu so I can feel like I'm "discovering" something. Tonight's random treat happened to be the red velvet cupcake...
Let me tell you how much this cupcake sucked. It was a paltry amount of actual red velvet topped topped by half a dixie cup of vanilla ice cream, followed by NOT cream cheese frosting and then a plop of cookie dough that looked like something you'd try to avoid stepping on.
The real coup de grace was the price of $9.10 for this pile of mediocrity that I can't return because I still shoved it down my mouth. There was no photo on the menu to sway me away from ordering it. I ate it because I had to know what was in there and what I tasted was the sad longing for corporate greed of a once great dessert institution.
Portland is the city where high priced treats aren't usually scoffed at, but quality and some semblance of quantity must ensue. A line must be drawn somewhere and that line starts with this nine dollar cupcake. The rest of the café will only get worse before it gets better.