Napoleon Bakery

I know of a number of Korean bakeries in Annandale alone, and I’m afraid Napoleon probably is not my favourite. On a recent visit, we tried a mocha bean bread and chocolate custard bread and sat down for a while. Chocolate custard bread tasted like it needed more filling, whereas the mocha bean bread had too much. Or it was a tad too sweet for me. Anyone familiar with the conch shell bread at Breeze bakery? We felt like Napoleon’s chocolate custard bread was supposed to be creamy, soft, and fluffy like the conch shell, but it just wasn’t.
Comparison to other korean bakeries in the neighbourhood is inevitable: we felt that Napoleon needed more variety and some unique offerings –squash bread at Manoa is an example– that could set then apart from competitors, as well as some de-​cluttering. Music couldn’t hurt, as it was dead silent when we were last here.
Don’t ask me why, but I would like to see all of them to be buzzing and successful, so I’ll have reasons to visit all of them regularly. Unfortunately, I find it hard to think of reasons to go back to Napoleon anytime soon.

I bought strawberry jam cookies, and rice cake here. The strawberry jam cookie was good not entirely sweet I like my cookies a bit sweeter. The rice cake had peas, sweet potatoes and something else in it, I did not care for it since I couldn’t get over the texture but my coworker loved it. This isn’t my first time here been here plenty of time and the owner is always nice and helpful. I love their tea the arrow root and jubjub? tea.

Came here for an Asian cake, ie. cake with cream and no icing. They have three sizes to choose from, small for around 6 – 7 people, medium for around 9 – 10 people and large for 12 – 14 people. We saw that they have chocolate cake and fruit cream cake, and a few other flavors in all 3 sizes. The fruit cake has fruits inside layers of cake. The chocolate cake has chocolate cream and pieces of chocolate and the cake itself is not overly chocolate nor sweet.
When we got there, they just sold the medium fruit cream cake we want. But then the lady behind the counter reassured us that they have more in the back that need decorating. Took her around 5 – 10 mins to decorate it and, viola, we have the cake we wanted.
Staff was helpful and friendly. They also have various kinds of bread products on the side as well. We knew they’re freshly made because we saw bakers at the back making breads while the lady was decorating our cake. We would come back to try their buns later.

The owner and workers are very unfriendly. I called just to ask something and they answered gruffly, which made me feel like I did something wrong. It was very embarrassing.

I have truly enjoyed their castella cakes over and over. They are light and fluffy and spongy and airy so not too sweet and pairs perfectly with a nice hot cup of black or green tea. I am not a fan of their heavy dense cakes, i.e., cinnamon cake or the crumb cake. It’s not so much the taste; it actually has a nice flavor. But it’s so completely opposite of qualities I prefer in cakes and incompatible with my palette. Those cakes are really really dense and dry and heavy. Your tongue, mouth, and throat begs for moisture once it enters your mouth. Don’t try talking or even spitting it out (sorry for being gross) because YOU CAN’T! Instead go for the soft cakes, manju, and assortments of breads.

Sorry, it doesn’t compare to NJ Korean bakeries. And I don’t recommend their paht bingsoo. They use the syrup and not a lot of fresh fruit. At least they give you both fruit and paht. Nothing special, but at least it wasn’t crowded when we went there on a Saturday night. I’d come here again after eating at Annangol (Korean Kalbi restaurant next door).

Really wish you could give ½ stars. I would give this a 3.5 rating.
I went here looking for a bubble tea from somewhere other than Phở Hot. Unfortunately, this was a disappointment. First, at $ 5.50, it is much more expensive. And there are less choices. Finally, I got the mango one and it definitely has that artificial flavor to it. It wasn’t terrible, but I doubt I’d get another one here.
I also picked up some of the fried dough twists, and as someone else mentioned, they are delicious. These mostly made up for the bubble tea disappointment. There were several other pastries that looked pretty tasty and reasonably priced and I will go back to try more of those.
Between the wide variety of pastries and the friendly service, I would definitely recommend stopping in.

Got the fried dough (pictured), a sweet potato bun, and a strawberry smoothie bubble tea.
Fried dough pastry was amazing. Best one I’ve ever had in the states. I bought and ate it around 7pm and it was still moist/​soft on the inside and crispy/​sweet on the outside. At other bakeries, this is usually soggy on the outside with the sugar melted on the outside. ⁵⁄₅
Sweet potato bun was deliciously sweet and chewy. One of my favorites. ⁵⁄₅
The strawberry smoothie was more milky-​yogurt-​y than fruity (which was what I expected). The bubbles weren’t fresh and soft. Skip this. I’ve had and enjoyed the matcha green tea smoothie before.
²⁄₅

I prefer this bakery over shilla.
They have all of the same pastries, equally delicious.
This is just not a place to sit around in and hang out like Shilla.
But the staff is very friendly and often give you extras to sample :)

About a 3.5: My husband and I came here for some dessert while we were in the area. Napoleon Bakery is situated in a plaza off of Annandale Center Dr, next to Annandale Catering and Annangol. They offer Korean breads and pastries (pound cakes, rice cake, morning rolls, pastries with cream, etc.), cakes, bing soos, as well as beverages (coffee, hot chocolate, green tea, smoothies, and bubble tea). I had a Strawberry smoothie (basically, a bubble tea with no tapioca), and it was very thick, creamy, and tasted literally like a strawberry milkshake. Definitely on the sweeter side, and it kind of reminded me of Yoohoo’s strawberry milk (so, if you’re into that, you’ll be a fan). I also found a new favorite dessert of mine — the ‘Rice Bean’ — it contains red bean, chestnut, and beans — it’s chewy as it’s like rice cake, and it contained red bean, chunks of chestnut and sweet red bean — yum! Definitely a great treat as a dessert or in the morning with coffee. Service was very sweet and friendly, and there were plenty of tables to sit down to rewind. :D
+‘Rice Bean’ pastry

I went here to order our daughter’s 100 day () cake. The baker met with me and talked me through the order. He was very kind, spoke English very well, and the result was fantastic. The cake was beautiful and even better than I could have imagined. I let him have a lot of creative license and only requested the flavor and the writing on the cake. He took it upon himself to paint beautiful flowers on the side and make a truly creative, gorgeous, and great-​tasting cake!

The coffee bing soo was ok as it didn’t really have too much ice cream and a little to much ice. The coffee at the bottom is very bitter and not very tasty. The cakes looked very pretty though so hopefully they are good as they look. They did not have samples of anything the day my friends and I went into the store which was disappointing because the treats looked very yummy.

I was looking for a custom cake and Mr. Cho said he could do it. I will post another review and tell you what the experience was (birthday party), but KUDOS to Napoleon Bakery for saying YES!

After eating at honey pig my friends and I strolled over to get some bubble tea. Well I didn’t want anything really but after sitting there I decided to get some bingsoo.
Listen, the amount of ice that was on that thing almost brought me to tears. That and the fact I had to do an ice excavation to find the froyo, then continue much deeper to get to the sad fruit on the bottom. I don’t even like melon that much and I feel like that was all there was. The only saving grace was the mochi but otherwise the experience was depressing.

I’ve been to Napoleon twice. Both times were following a visit to their across-​the-​street neighbor Honey Pig. We came this second time specifically for some dessert and bubble tea.
What we got was an adventure.
We walked in fairly late (they close at 11 PM I think) and started browsing the pastries and looking at the menu. After a few minutes, my wife and friends and I went up to order.
First, I ordered a mango bubble tea (is $ 5.50 pricey?) and my wife got a honey citron hot tea. I can’t fault the woman behind the counter for not speaking good English. This is a pretty Korean-​centric place. But the menu had Korean and Enligsh names for the tea and she was almost unable to match up the verbal English to the written English. Eventually she did and the order was correct.
Next up, my friend ordered a pastry and a second bubble tea. The woman told HIM it would be five minutes. She said nothing to me about a wait for boba. Whatever – it’s Saturday night and we weren’t in a rush.
Finally our other friends placed their order for two hot teas and a pastry (maybe $ 5 worth) and the total came to $ 14 something. One of them handed the woman behind the counter his credit card, she swiped it, and he said, «wait a minute!» in response to which she tore up the credit card slip and threw it away and re-​rang his order and ran his card again. She tore up the slip… but didn’t enter in a refund transaction. I wonder how that’ll end up…
Anyway we all sat down and started munching on the pastries and the hot teas came out first.
A couple minutes later, we heard what sounded like heavy equpiment running in the back of the kitchen. There was a lone guy frosting a cake but we couldn’t see what the noise was. After a couple minutes it stopped.
Then it started again… somewhere between a grinder or maybe a power drill. Definitely something bigger and more powerful than a blender. Meanwhile, it had been about 10 minutes and we still didn’t have our bubble teas. And nobody was to be found.
The noise stopped and started a few times more and after about 20 or 30 minutes and some serious laughter and giddiness on our part, the two bubble teas came out. The woman handed me my tea and then handed my friend his and told him,. «Sorry, we ran out of tapioca balls.»
Sorry. She ran out of tapioca balls for your five dollar and fifty cent bubble tea that took 30 minutes to make and she didn’t even offer you a refund or discount or anything. The least she could have done was call it a smoothie.
So there you go, Napoleon gets one star for being utterly ridiculous.

Three and a half stars. Shares the tiny parking lot with a Chinese place,
Shiseido boutique, etc. Pet peeve alert: baked goods sitting unprotected in the sun. Yes, I understand you’re trying to draw in the few window shoppers you can in this tiny, isolated strip mall. But condensation forming on the inside of the bun wrapper doesn’t make me a happy buyer.
Service very friendly, feel is like a more earth-​tones Shilla. Taro boba was scooped from the blender in lumps, creamy but mixed from powder. Tofu skin chips were my favorite out of the baked purchases, light and crunchy. Mochi was my second favorite, the right amount of chew and just enough sweetness. The buns were all appropriately sweet: green mung bean, azuki red bean, sweetened white bean. Split a loaf of pecan bread with Lia but it still took me a week to work through it– very moist and sweet. I wish there had been a savory selection while we were there.

The Bingsoo tasted amazing, was well presented and well portioned. The ice cream was placed on top of red bean w/​syrup lined with fruit and crushed ice on the bottom… mmm… Definitely recommend going to this bakery. They provide free samples of their baked goods, make red-​bean cakes and other yummy treats. Definitely a worth while place to check out when you’re craving something sweet.

Another one of the many Korean bakeries in Annandale. I just dig ‘em all as alternative options for days you get too bored of one or another.
The seating is limited and so is parking, but the baked goods are good. You won’t be disappointed.
Personally, I like the bingsoo at Le Matin de Paris better though. But it could be because there’s a HUGE scoop of frozen yogurt on the Paris bingsoo… yum, frozen yogurt…

Thanks to Michele D for introducing me to the best and most affordable bingsoo I’ve yet had in Annandale. Don’t listen to the employees about the size of the servings. It does not fit in the palm of your hand. $ 5 here gets you what amounts to a small meal.
What would typically cost you easily a good 50% more at some other nearby Korean bakeries, Napoleon offers at a far more attractive price point. And that includes your option of a scoop of ice cream (which, really? frozen dairy on bingsoo? ew…), a mound of semi-​sweet red beans, a heap of seasonal fruit like honeydew and watermelon, and a mountain of shaved ice topped off with condensed milk.
Word to the wise: if you’ve just finished gorging yourself into a food coma from the fried deliciousness of Bön Chon, order one of these to share with friends.
Napoleon offers a similar repertoire of baked goods like your Shilla or Le Matin as well. Fresh, pleasantly packaged breads, buns, and cookies, as well as cakes and more. All at seemingly affordable prices.
And if anyone is willing to try the Pocari Sweat canned beverage to let us know what it is… well, bonus points to you.

As Stephanie N. mentioned, this place makes me think of the animé/​manga Yakitate Japan! as well, but for different reasons.
This is a kind of small bakery (Pantasia South Tokyo branch) going up against the goliath empire of Shilla (St. Pierre main branch) and the next in line Le Martin de Paris (some other chain?). Will it survive or be crushed to oblivion? Does anyone in the store have solar hands to help create more deliciousness in the bread? Is there someone in the store who will one day rise up to invent the next great bread and needs my support to achieve the dream?
Eh…in any case, Napoleon does the standard Korean/​Asian bakery staples and does a pretty good job at it. Cream buns, castella, Swiss roll cakes, pizza breads, highly fattening butter cream bread, chestnut bread, fruit tart things, and the like.
I noticed that Fresh World/​El Grande Supermercado is stocking their baked goods in the bakery.
Since Asian bakeries tend to be pretty similar, here are a few things that make this place stand out a little in my mind.
1. Prices are slightly lower than other places.
2. Kind of greasy, but I enjoy the curry pan/​bbang (curry bread), a panko covered deep fried bread stuffed with curry potatoes. I don’t remember seeing this elsewhere.
3. Not Shilla. I shouldn’t rag on Shilla so much, but still, I kind of feel like I should support somewhere not as popular, less crowded, and with similarly delicious baked goods. They don’t have as much seating though.
4. They seem to practice the art of saabisu (service).
In Japan, probably Korea as well, since they leave the goods out at room temperature all day, they normally don’t try to sell day old bread the next day. :cough cough SHILLA cough cough: That means after a certain time, stuff gets marked down or they’ll toss in a few extra goodies. This is call saabisu taimu (service time), or service for short.
Last time when I was picking up a few things at Napoleon in the evening, they threw in a few extra cream buns. None were moldy. All tasty.
I haven’t tried their bingsu. The last time I tried the green tea boba, the bubbles were a little too hard but the smoothy was good.