The Essential Bakery - Wallingford Cafe

Great sandwiches, soups, and other yummy baked goods. Kale salad was so good! Quality of their food is great. They have indoor and outdoor seatings available. Indoor has a nice high ceilings and feels spacious. Vegan options are available as well. Good place for everyone! The service can be slow sometimes. If you are in rush, it may not work for you. Street parking only. This area is not too hard to find parking spot if you are parking for 1-2hours.

So extremely disappointed in the quality of our recent purchase of two ciabatta loaves. We were celebrating our "Family Christmas Dinner" and purchased two loaves of the ciabatta bread only to find them HOLLOW inside. So, basically we bought "CRUST". I mentioned this to an employee at the store where we purchased the bread and they suggested that I contact the company about quality control. However, your site won't display the email address to contact customer service. Here are the photos of the loaves we purchased. One of them is MUCH worse than the other, but they were both hollow.

We just happened upon this place while driving by and decided to stop for lunch. We had the turkey, bacon, havarti sandwiches (daily special) and they were delicious! Loved the potato salad and pickle that came with it and the service was pretty fast, I guess because it was 2:00 in the afternoon and the lunch rush was over. I also noticed that half the lunch menu was erased and they were out of a few other things. I'm assuming the menu is complete earlier in the day before they sell out of certain items. My main complaint was that it was pretty expensive for two whole sandwiches and one bottled drink ($28). Unfortunately, none of their baked goods looked very good so we skipped them. I would eat here again, though.

If you are in the area, a great place for a stop. Not worth coming all the way from downtown Seattle for it though. Coffee and Sweets were satisfyingly good. Plenty of seats and tables and a very relaxed atmosphere.

Fresh, fast, and freaking good! I have heard great things about essential bakery and I am glad I tried it! I had to pick up food for a work event and was able to grab a sandwich for myself. I was in and out within 15 minutes. Pictured is their Bacon and Edd sandwich.

This was not a Reuben. This was little pieces of thick sliced pastrami with wilted Chinese cabbage (why??), thick sliced pickles, provolone, mustard seeds (?) and thousand island dressing. It looked okay; it tasted okay.. I wish they hadn't called it a Reuben. The service and coffee (cappuccino) were lackluster, as well... The ambiance is nice! Seriously, I don't understand the wilted Chinese cabbage...

Very nice café, not too crowded. Good coffee, great pastries.

The business is well run and clean, but no matter how much I try I hate most of the baked goods. Their quiche is more than 50% cheese (I love cheese and it is too much for me). Some of there breads are so oily that my hands were covered with oil and my stomach ached. I gave them 3 stars instead of 2 only because their soup is okay and their cinnamon rolls are delicious. Overall, they charge high prices for very mediocre baked goods.