J & W Bakery

I would give this place a 3.5 stars. The bread is well made, but there is a major lack of variety in flavors. Even with the given choices, most of them taste very similar, egg custardy or cream-​y. The price is alright for a little over a dollar for most bread. I’d say it’s comparable to other chinese bakery elsewhere. The staff/​cashier is very nice and friendly, much better comparing to many other places I have been.

What a cute family owned bakery. I came in for dessert and tried a cream bun and Taiwanese soufflé. The bread was fluffy and moist and the fillings were great. I love that their pastries have just the right amount of sweetness.
I definitely plan to come back for milk tea with boba and some of their savory items!

Authentic Cantonese bakery. Excellent egg custard made freshly everyday. The only thing missing here is Hong Kong style tea with milk.

I’m from the big city of Chicago and I’m stamping this bakery with my approval!
My family friends happened to be in St. Louis for the weekend and they brought home bakery treats from J & W. The cocktail buns differed from its usual appearance but they were so soft even after sitting for a day. The cake was not upsetting either. It was so fluffy… so light… so moist… and so soft.
These are very simple bakery items yet the Chinese bakeries of the big city of Chicago can’t seem to match up. J & W surpasses most if not all of the Chicago Chinese bakeries that I have been to! So despite, J & W being slightly pricier and charging a nominal fee for boxes, I will make that extra trip if I was in town!

Their stuffed pineapple buns are the best! Perfect for dessert! light and fluffy!

I got some buns and an egg tart here. The egg tart was A-​Ok and I was really hngry so I devoured it quickly.
The buns were good but I keep on forgetting I think I like buns more than I actually do. The custard buns had more of a bean paste texture than custard. I was mildly disappointed.
This place is ok, not amazing and maybe even a bit disappointing. I’ll probably take my business elsewhere.

This place is pretty good, but they are also on the pricey side. Also, their buns and pastries are on the smaller side, including the amount of filling that they put in their buns. I have to give this place props for their cleanliness compared to the wei hong bakery down the street. My favorite bun they have here is the pork sung bun. It’s a buttery bun cut down the middle, filled with an asian mayo and filled with pork sung. So delicious!

The egg tarts didn’t look tasty & were quite smaller than the ones at Wei Hong Bakery on Olive. The almond cookies were okay. Just okay. Pretty much bland tasting. But, the only thing I like about them is that there are almond slivers on top of the cookies. The other con about this place is that they only take cash. Friendly staff as stated in previous reviews.

I stepped in here because I heard they had egg tarts and red bean sesame balls, even though my loyalty has been with Wei Hong for so long… The reviews for this place have been pretty good so far so I had hopes.
The guy at the front just stared at me when I walked in. I told him what I wanted, he seemed to nod and left… another guy walked back in and stared me down… I told him I had just ordered with someone else and he said «no, what do you want»… Not really like a question more like an ‘uggghhhh’. So I ordered again… They didn’t have sesame balls.
I asked if they had bubble tea (it was on the menu above), he said no bubbles.
Eventually I left with an egg tart… When I ate it, I pretty much spit it out and threw away the entire thing. I have NEVER done that before! The crust was not flaky and similar to a puff pastry, it was harder, very crumbly and tasted like bad shortbread. It pretty much ruined it for me.
As much as I’d like to give this place at least two stars, there was nothing redeeming about it for me.
Also, I really wish bakeries would have their goods ready according to their store hours. If they can’t be, why not open later? I’m fine with bakeries running out of baked goods (that means they’re worth it) but to not have them ready or just decide not to make them one day when they’re on a visible menu is just mean :(

Come on, I’m the fattest chick on Unilocal,am I really going to give a bad review to a BAKERY???
Compare J&W to a Chinatown bakery in Chicago and yeah, of course it falls short. But just appreciate it for what it is.
I’ve driven past this place for over a year and never even noticed it was there. I guess your eye immediately goes to the McDonald’s across the street (well, my eye does, anyway). Thanks to Unilocal,I was finally able to discover a business that’s been in front of my face this whole time. It really wouldn’t hurt them to invest in a better sign, though.
Really cute little place. Lots of tables, brightly lit, TVs, cute décor, very clean.
Very friendly staff. You grab a tray and load up on the cheapest freaking baked goods I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I try not to think about how they are so cheap. I guess it makes me think of Steve Martin in «Father of the Bride» («A CAKE, Frank, is made of FLOUR and WATER.»).
The selection is not that great, but it’s not horrible, either, and it largely depends on when you go. Just grab a bunch of random crap. It’s so cheap, you can afford to play around here and try different things. A lot of their items are very light and only slightly sweet. Eat them here, it’s a great location, or take them to go. They hold up well and are packaged well.
The major downside is that it’s cash only, but the place is so cheap you can just run out to your car, reach into the crevices of your backseat, and likely find enough change to purchase a trunk full of Weight Watchers kryptonite.
I’d love to tell you what I have actually eaten here, but I’m not the kind of chick who has enough self control in a bakery to stop and actually read what each thing is. In a Chinese bakery, I usually go for neon green and pink things. Something about a melon-​flavored sponge cake that makes you know everything’s gonna be okay.
I have to go eat the rest of my feelings now.

Thanks to St. Louis Unilocalers, we found this bakery.
We stopped by here on our way back from LuLu.
We brought the following:
–dunn tze– a salty glutineous rice wrap with pork, egg and mushroom – very good, outstanding even by NYC standard.
–wintermelon cake (OK)
–red bean cake (OK)
–egg custard tarts (nice)
–mango roll (OK)
–walnut cookies (OK)
The piece of resistance was the mango slush. VERY NICE.

Great chinese bakery in St. Louis. I only know of 2 chinese bakeries in town, but this one stands out to me for their great variety of baked goods, cleanliness, and good quality items.
I’m usually not a fan of any kind of chinese buns and breads, but I love the cake here! The cake is so soft and frosting is similar to a buttercream. I love the swiss egg rolls, which come in flavors of vanilla, chocolate, and green tea. I also love the sponge cakes and the napoleon cake. The prices are cheap. I wish they had more pastries or those little cakes that you would find in big city Chinatown bakeries though. Overall, great place.

The atmosphere is nice and clean and the sweeter baked goods were ok but all the meaty buns I tried were pretty lackluster. I was also REALLY disappointed that they only had baked buns none of those delicious steamed pork buns that everyone loves. On the other hand I went pretty late in the day, might be better earlier and I didn’t try the bubble tea yet so hopefully my opinion will improve in the future. Also it is for sure cheap as hell: I got WAY more food than I could eat in even two meals for under $ 5.

I LOVE J&W. i would take a 4hr drive from KC to st louis just to eat at J&W. their pork floss and green onion roll is to die for. i ate there everyday for breakfast during my weekend trip to st louis and bought 20 different pastries to take home to KC before i left. wish there was a place like that in KC.

Probably the best Chinese bakery in town. They’ve got a slew of baked goods served in a nice bright non-​greasy place with Chinese concert/​karaōke videos playing on the screens. My favorites are the «cocktail bread» and the sesame balls.
On top of all that, this place isn’t expensive either. I would sometimes drop by here to grab some stuff along the way to class for a quick (albeit not very healthy) dinner.
Their bubble tea is pretty decent.
Oh and for you vegetarians out there… most Chinese bakeries use lard so it would be a good idea to ask if they do as well.

Good Chinese bakeries are marvelous things. You walk in and see a selection of nearly identical looking buns, all of which cost less than a buck. Some of them sound familiar (BBQ pork buns) and some sound sketchy (yellow custard buns, which are AWESOME). It turns out that there’s a visual code that allows you to distinguish them by sight — the yellowish spiral on the yellow custard bun, the pineapple bun’s cracked sugary layer (much like a melon pan) — but since there’s no day-​old section you can just rely on the labels attached to the front of the shelves.
J & W Bakery is a pretty good Chinese bakery. (And who expects to find that in St. Louis?) The variety’s not stellar, but they turn out very solid versions of most of the standard buns. Good places to start include the delicious and cheap coconut, BBQ pork, and pineapple buns. If you want to diversify a little, the taro bun is fantastic and the curry beef bun is surprisingly good, while the yellow custard bun is the best thing in the whole place. Stay away from the bun with the hot dog in it – it’s just as bad as it is everywhere else in the world, and I have no clue as to why it’s a Chinese bakery staple. And the red bean bun’s filling has a kind of jam-​like taste to it that seems just slightly off.