First Visit: the kolachy shop

My friend David and I enjoyed a delicious kolachy lunch at the kolachy shop near BC Place today (888 Beatty Street, 604 488-0200)

What is a Kolachy? According to their website, it is a "delicious mild sweet bread filled with your favourite breakfast, lunch and dessert ingredients then baked fresh".

I spoke with the owners, Keith and Jason, and apparently kolachy is of Czech origin (I've also read on the Net that it's Polish and from other Eastern European countries as well) and they heard about it when one of them was living in Dallas where kolachys are very popular.

They decided that this was a niche waiting to be filled in Vancouver and reverse-engineered the kolachy recipe (it took dozens of attempts) with one of their friends who just happens to be a chef. The kolachy shop opened a couple of months ago and serves a wide variety of breakfast, lunch and dessert kolachys.

I had a lunch special for $6.25 with a regular soup. There are usually two soups on offer; today I had the matzo ball soup which was fine but the kolachys were even better.

The two kolachys that I had (based on David's recommendation since he's a regular) were the reuben (corn beef, sauerkraut and swiss) and the baked veggie (goat cheese with marinated and baked veggies). Delicious! The sweetness of the kolachy dough nicely complemented the flavours of both kolachys!

We saved the best for last. Some of you may have observed my obsession with Mohnkuchen which is German poppy seed cake. When I lived in Germany, we used to beg the staff at our cafeteria to bake it; I am not usually a fan of cafeteria food, but the Dornier Kantine in Friedrichshafen made excellent cakes and pastries and their mohnkuchen was the best I've had! The mohnkuchen at Fraser Bakery and Konditorei is delicious, but it's not quite the same!

I am happy to report that the poppy seed kolachy is the closest yet to the Dornier mohnkuchen. The filling is sweet but not too sweet and goes wonderfully with the kolachy dough. If you love poppy seed cake or German mohnkuchen, then you owe it to yourself to try out the kolachy shop's poppy seed kolachy. At $1.50 it's an affordable luxury!

Needless to say, we'll be back for more savory kolachys and for a couple of poppy seed koloachys natuerlich!