Fong Thanh Bakery

While the bakery seems to offer enough variety for a snack, lunch or food experiment (which is why I was here), by no means was the variety overwhelming. The place smelled fabulous, though.
The woman working the counter spoke limited English. I wanted to ask a lot of questions but opted not to, as I suspected we’d have communication challenges. The hint was that I asked one question and she placed food labels in front of me to ensure I knew what she was talking about. If you stop in and aren’t familiar with Asian baking, you have to accept that you may play an ingredients guessing game. I was totally clueless, which makes perfect sense. I grew up in a Mennonite community in Saskatchewan.
I ended up trying a chicken bun. While they are huge, the buns are very light and don’t have much substance. The filling had chunks of chicken, a bit of sauce and what I suspected was cooked celery. It tasted okay but honestly, there was just way too much bun and not enough filling. Maybe this is normal, but it’s not for me and is a slight waste of calories as far as I’m concerned. If I ever end up at this end of town again and drop in, I’ll just try something else.

The Fong Thanh Bakery, located next to the Hong Kong Int’l Supermarket on 17^th Ave SE, is jam packed with all the Asian baked goods you can imagine and more.
Unlike a lot of the bakeries I’ve visited, their display cases are crammed with everything from sweet to savoury, and all points in between.
The BBQ Pork bun for $ 1.25 was calling my name, with its perfectly round yellow bun and shiny egg wash, and I opted for a CoCo Rico coconut soda, also $ 1.25. The pork bun was an extremely generous size (about ½ the size of my head), and when heated up, was a tasty treat. There was a nice mix of minced BBQ pork and sauce inside the somewhat sweet pastry. The coconut soda tasted much like cream soda and was cool and refreshing.
When you consider that this ample snack cost only $ 2.50 in total, you’d have to say that the Fong Thanh Bakery delivers mucho bang for your buck!