For Sweet Tooths: Sanlitun's Newest Bakery

When I was researching for our September dining feature on delivery-only expat enterprises, my mind immediately turned to Sweet Tooth. They've been on the Beijing baked good scene for two and a half years now, hand-delivering sweets all over the city. However, I soon discovered they would be delivery-only no more.

Sweet Tooth Cafe is open at 18 Xinzhong Jie, just west of Great Leap Brewpub and behind Golden Pineapple Youth Hostel. It's tucked down a narrow alley (you have to pass a Japanese kato-ya place), protected from the din of what is becoming quite the hectic area. The cafe has a surprisingly large wood deck in front, ideal for the few remaining days of good weather.

A cafe has been the ultimate goal for the creative force behind the operations, Mei Tan, and you can see the care that has been taken in assembling the menu. There are, of course, sweets. Baked by Mei, offerings rotate through the glass case and range in price from RMB 20-35 for single items (cupcakes, muffins, slices of pie and cake). When I showed up towards the end of the day, there was a banana bread muffin, a slice of carrot cake (quite good, though I prefer the denser variety), a red velvet cupcake (moist, not dry as I find many to be, with on-point icing) and a truly exceptional slice of peanut butter pie.

Sweet Tooth has partnered with Tavalin Bagels to offer a selection of four bagel flavors (everything, sun-dried tomato, sesame seed and cinnamon raisin) along with three spread or filling options. Choose from cream cheese (RMB 30), cream cheese with lox (RMB 45), or a bacon, egg & cheese (RMB 45). For an extra RMB 15, add fries and a salad.

A full selection of espresso-based drinks (RMB 20-30) are available with Colombian coffee provided by Coffee Man. Tea is from Australian company T2 Tea with flavors like chai and a very fragrant earl grey. They can also whip you up a milkshake (RMB 35, roughly) with gelato from Vai Milano.

Sweet Tooth is in soft opening right now with hours from 11am-7pm, Tuesday through Sunday. They've got a few things still in the works; paninis are in development (bread from Comptoirs de France) along with other hot foods. Mei is tweaking various recipes (most notably the cheesecake) to work properly with the new ovens and kitchen set-up and will be rolling those back out when she's perfected them.

Photos: the Beijinger

Email: catnelson@thebeijinger.com
Twitter: @haimei_baole
Instagram: @haimei_baole
Weibo: @cat_nelson

More stories by this author here