Saint-Germain Bakery

I think this is a chain type bakery, however… the baked goods here were amazingly fresh and tasty. They both sweet & savory treats that were being restocked as I was there. The prices seemed to be in line with other places nearby.

Horrible. Went in here to buy mini French breads that were mysteriously on sale for $ 1.25. Had a feeling it was old bread they were trying to get rid of from the previous day but when I asked them if it was new or old, the old lady at the counter gave me a stare and told me «we bake it fresh everyday.» When I got home I felt the hard stale bread and was incredibly disappointed. They lied. I’d rather pay the full price for fresher bread. Extremely irritated. I’d have more respect if they told me the truth.

Their sammiches are soooo good! and they take EBT card! who knew :)

I would give a zero but not an option.
1. Can’t write happy bday on a cake? You are a bakery.
2. I have to wait for a manager
3. Charge $ 3 to write a msg while I wait for a manager?
4. Cakes are good but don’t come here to the mall location it’s not accommodating.

I think I’m becoming a morning regular here for my cheap coffee and $ 1.75 pastry these days. Before i start work, the greatest thing to greet me early in the morning at Ala Moana is when I see Saint-Germain’s lights on. Just knowing that they open at 7am is enough to give them 3 out of my 4 stars for this review, the last star being the yummy selection of delectable fresh baked goods.
Almost every item i’ve had from here hasn’t disappointed me. I do have to say that I think this location beats out the Dillingham one for quality of taste IMO. Take your pick of everything from muffins, pizza, doughnuts, cronuts, cookies, cakes, sandwiches, breads, coffee… you name it! Obviously expect to have the items taste better earlier in the day when they are freshly prepared, but if you do stop by in the afternoon and find that an item is too cold to eat, just let one of the workers know and they’ll heat it up for you in their microwave no charge. No one should have to consume a cold pastry and not have it be at their desired temperature to enjoy it.
When you walk in, on your left you’ll see a stack of trays, a row of tongs and a box of wax paper. This is for your convenience if your deciding on purchasing multiple pastry’s from their long display. Fill up your tray and just take it to the counter when you’re ready to pay! The workers will ring you up really quickly and be of service in any way they can. And on your way out don’t forget to gaze at the amazing creative cake and cookie designs they usually decorate. One of the best things about this bakery is how beautifully they decorate their baked goods.

Dear St. Germaine Bakery,
Nearly a decade and a half ago you were my first job out in the real world and I will always remember you. When no one else would hire me because I was too dumb to NOT say «Oh, and I will be going on exchange to London in January», you took the risk and took me on. Or I just finally wised up and didn’t mention it. Hm. I think it may have been the latter.
Nevertheless.
I enjoyed your pastries before working there and I continue to enjoy your pastries far after. I think that’s definitely a testament to… something. I’ve even begun eating glazed donuts again as it only took about ten years to forget the sickening smell of the donut deep fryer.
You are not the cheapest bakery, but your products are quality. I have an affinity for your ham and pizza rolls, for your custard long johns, for your strawberry shortcake, for the raisin sticks and custard cups and square breads.
I don’t eat pastries often, but now and then I wander into your doors and reminisce. I also usually walk into your doors near closing so I can take advantage of the $ 3.75 bags of pastries. Though the last time I did that I had a bag of three coconut turnovers with not an apple in the bunch, so that wasn’t very fun. That’s the risk I suppose.
You remind me of childhood, early adulthood, and a tremendous range of assorted memories. Sunday afternoon treats, birthdays, family get-​togethers, the harshness of a Japanese head boss, the kindness of my Japanese manager with the beautiful eyes, the FOB coworkers who hated me, the FOB coworkers who liked me, the weird coworker who I’m pretty sure was on crack (she was fired), the coworker who would make a giant sandwich on an entire loaf of french bread and eat it for lunch (after smoking out of in the stairwell), the bakery manager who thought I was beautiful… You are a part of my life.
Love,
Angela

I love it here… fresh bake goods and good customer service… i like coming here for my an pan… yummy…

The aromatic whiff of fresh baked bread is nothing but intoxicating. From the artisan breads laid out in baskets to the rows of flavorful pastries & intricate cake designs made for any & every occasion, you can taste & see the difference in quality here at St. Germaine’s.
I haven’t sampled many of the bakery’s pastries & have yet to try their sandwiches, but my childhood favorites are the creamy custard long-​john, the flaky apple napple & the savory, mini raisin bread loaf.
Let me just say that you won’t find your typical 89-​cent supermarket glazed doughnuts here, but if you’re in for a scrumptious treat, take a bite out of St. Germaine’s at Ala Moana Shopping Center.

Low rating cause no more cronuts… I wanted a cronut…
My new search will be this apparent pastry delight.
Next stop this afternoon will be a local food truck that is reported to have them.

Coming from Europe, I miss certain foods from time to time, especially the way how bread and pastries taste.
Well, not so much anymore: D
(that said, I have been going here for a while now, just never got around to write a review lol)
They come very close to the taste of European pastries and their breads, like the Dutch bread, are great. Sure, it still does not beat the actual taste of the pastries and bread in Europe, but I do know that when I miss my native country, a visit to this store can make things a bit better again!

i love saint germain bakery, i like how they make their bread so soft and flavorful. i usually go to location in alamoana but now they have 2 so it help even more.
i found out that now they start to have macaroon too which it make it even better, what make it even best is that their price is lower then any other place i have been to.
i always come here to buy french bread so i can make a sandwich at home. their bread is made daily and i love it for that.
I love the smell of the fresh bread, it’s goes so well with fresh brew coffee. saint germain also has many different type of bread but they are little expensive so i don’t buy those quite often.
This location has really great service, every time i walk in there they greet us and asking if need help with sandwich. i guess i always think about sandwich every time i walk in there and they can see it in my face.
I love starch and this is my #1 place to buy french bread and their customer service so i gave them 5 star.

What the %!@$ is a cronut?!
Well, had to try this donut 2.0 for myself, but I heard they were hard to find, even in Honolulu. But after doing some research, found that Saint Germain sells these things, but limit it to 100 at each shop, per day. Apparently a croissant bred with a donut (not the other way around or it would be called a dossant), resulting in this baby!
So, off I trekked through the construction corridor near the former Sears at Ala Moana. Couldn’t find the escalator that led downstairs to the post office area cause they must’ve sold that too during Sears’ clearance sale!!! So after rushing through Long’s like a starving little child, I finally found some stairs.
Walked in and like an exhibit in an art gallery, I saw one, yes the last cronut, waiting there for me. I swear there seemed to be a glow to it as it sat there waiting to be taken, like the last kid chosen for a team! So I helped myself to this hamburger looking treat and bypassed all the other delicious looking snacks. Walked up to the counter to pay and was impressed that my one fancy donut got its own box! Couldn’t wait to try it…
It was delicious, probably one of the better snacks I’ve had, but not as great as I expected after reading raves about it online. In other words, I’d eat it again, no doubt, but wouldn’t go searching for it if I didn’t have to.
Oh yeah, the bakery is very nice and most of the stuff is self serve. Prices little higher than your average bakery, but I guess at Ala Moana, it fits right in. Good place to satisfy your sweet tooth.

WOW! All I can say is this place leaves me utterly confused. So there we were, hungry for lunch & pressed for time. We didn’t want to go into the humdrum of the food court in Ala Moana because it’s normally complete chaos. We’ve had their pastries before so it didn’t seem like it would have been a HUGE leap of trust to jump from pastries to sandwiches… OMG was I wrong! Where to begin w/​this epic adventure… I guess we’ll start w/​the service. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in the service industry & know what it’s like to get slammed & be in a rush, but when we went in there the extent of their «slammed» was them talking story behind the counter. We came up & there was one girl who looked extremely busy, flustered & ready to snap BUT she was SUPER helpful while there were 4 other girls jaw-​jacking & messing around not paying any attention to this girl trying to help the other customers. Finally one of the useless employees decided to help us w/​our sandwich requests because the super helpful girl was trying to ring up a psychotic little old lady. We asked for two sandwiches, an egg salad & ham finger sandwich & a pastrami on a French roll. The first sandwich was a nightmare! She put a glob of what looked like a blend of lard, butter & a splash of cool whip on the first piece of bread & slapped on a single piece of ham. She added a piece of bread, another healthy serving of the lard blend, and then globed a mound of egg salad right in the middle of this piece. She topped it off w/​a final piece of bread & began cutting off the crust. WAIT! Am I missing something, you may be thinking… Didn’t she spread the egg salad to evenly coat the bread??? Oh no, no, no… that would have involved effort & she did not look like she was in the mood to exert herself after her heavy duty laughing w/​her co-​workers as they watched their colleague freak out on the register. So she cuts off the crust then cuts the sandwich in half. Because of her extreme attention to detail, she managed to put the majority of the egg salad on one side of the sandwich cut leaving a smidgen of egg salad on the other. How did she know we wanted to completely unbalance the sandwich?! So she jammed the sandwich into a small container & looked up at me. She didn’t ask if I’d like something, she didn’t ask if everything was okay, she didn’t ask if I wanted another helping of the lard, she didn’t say anything… she just looked up at me & stared… I took this as a sign that maybe it was my turn for the fun. Now I’m going to take a moment to break away & quote one of my fav movies Ratatouille:
How do you tell how good bread is w/​out tasting it? Not the smell, not the look, but the sound of the crust.
Listen. Symphony of crackle.
Only great bread sound this way.
Being a bakery I was hoping for that symphony of crackle from the piece of bread she grabbed. Unfortunately I get more snap, crackle & pop from Rice Krispies. The bread she grabbed looked like it was made a few days earlier & they just had to get rid of it. I thought «suck it up!» She added a nice big dollop of lard/​butter blend to my sandwich, jammed in pastrami then started to add vegies. Mid-​way through her vegie aneurism she looked up & realized I was actually talking to her! While she was having it her way I was nicely asking her not to put certain things in. Then it cued in w/​her «OMG! I’m at work» … Here’s where she asked «oh, do you want vegies?» At this point she’s already added lettuce, tomatoes, olives, & was on the onions. I said «um, I actually didn’t want any but since you put them on I’m okay w/​it, can I just have pickles?» She looked at me, looked down at her soirée of vegies, & said «I don’t have pickles, I have pickled onion.» Hmmm… Pickles vs Pickled onion… this is a toughie… Do I go to work smelling like pickled onion or do I ask her to put on the diced pickles I’m staring at… I decided to take the high road, maybe she’s never seen a pickle, so I said «oh, no thank you» & left it at that. She cut my vegie sandwich in half & put it in a plastic baggie… Then she sent me over to the cashier who had calmed down a little. I had a $ 50 gift card so I handed it over to her & thought this would be it. Well, it turns out screwing up sandwiches is only part of the fun… Cashier charged a little too much so had to void it. Reran it & was only able to charge $ 11 of the $ 16 it cost for this cluster f**k of a episode. I gave her my credit card, she ran it, & it went through w/​out any hiccups… Started lunch at 11:30, time to walk there: 5 minutes; time to decided what we’re gonna eat: 6 minutes; time for them to completely screw w/​my emotions: 23 minutes… Spent almost a half an hour w/​a lady that could have cared less that there was a paying customer in front of her.
The pastries are good though the service beyond simple pastry transactions lacks immensely!

«Honey, that was amazing.»
That’s what I said to my «first».
Well, my first CRONUT ever was not amazing, but pretty damned good.
Had the cream-​filled version from here ($ 3.50 per + tax). GOOD. Ate it with a fork and knife to avoid getting a mustache and goatee of the much powdered sugar that adorns the cronut’s top.
I’m not yet ready to jump on the cronut bandwagon, but this bugger got me interested in following along a while at least.
I’m not partial. I love all donuts in whatever form. Mmm… donuts.
[I think I’ll just buy those pants with the stretchy waistband. (See my review of 7/​27/​13.)]

This is my other to go place when I hit up Ala Moana second to Shirokiya. Few of my fave pastries include their ham roll, curry fry, mushroom pizza. I normally don’t get any of the sweet stuff since I heart meat lol.
Get some you won’t regret it! Go late night before closing they bag the leftovers in three/​four bundles for cheap!

The cakes, cookies, and pastries here are pretty damn good but you pay for it because they are expensive! Customer service is almost non-​existent, ask a question and you are lucky if you get more than a few word answer, probably in broken English. I guess the high prices don’t trickle down to employee pay because they seem very unhappy.
Last time I was there I was charged for pastries I didn’t order or receive so check your receipt closely because their registers are not the newest and you can’t tell what you are paying for until you get your receipt.

This review like many is a story of my sweet tooth and gluttony. The croissant donut as they call it here, or the cronut as those of us less refined folk call it is what lead me here after my husband looked up at me with beady eyes from his computer asking me about the cronut craze, if I knew where to find one, and if I could oblige him in derailing his P90x diet for just a tiny bit because well everyone knows that a six pack ab is no fun without a little bit of powdered sugar on it…
So I tell my husband who by now is in a sugar induced trance about the fact that I would be going to the Ala Moana Center to return and exchange some clothing, spend a couple of additional dollars and even threatened to buy and expensive hand bag but all he heard was «sugar.»
I wandered past the bakery on my way to a store I really did need to make an exchange at and noted that they only carried 100 croissant donuts a day «regular» and «cream» filled. I figured I would roll the dice and come back in a bit and see what was there.
When I arrived about 11:00 or so only the cream filled croissant donuts remained so I purchased two and did my best to control myself from buying the other items for sale that in all honesty looked a LOT better than the mystical cronut. The french bread on the counter with the slice of ham was simply saying «eat me» to me as I paid for my pastries and head out the door, and there was not a loaf of bread in there that I didn’t want to gnaw on.
Definitely worth a second trip just for breads, and to take a better look at the pastries that are not the «headliner of the week.»
Upon arriving home with the cronuts, my husband acted like a boy on Christmas morning sad he had to return to work before he could eat his «treat.»
What happened when we ate our treats is just sad. These are MESSY. I had to have my shirt and pants dust bustered by my husband because it looked like I swam in a sea of powdered sugar.
I thought the top of the cronut was good and somewhat reminiscent of an elephant ear or a funnel cake but it wasn’t orgamsic the way some people have been describing these things. I tossed the bottom half. My husband demolished his and almost pulled a George Costanza and ate mine out of the garbage.
The service at the counter was efficient but not friendly. They didn’t hate that I was there but they didn’t love that I was there either.

This location is by far the best. Most of the ones I’ve been too are HOT and run down/​dirty at times.
Their food is expensive but you can tell they don’t use the cheapest ingredients.
We usually get the bread for sandwiches. Little pricey but consistently good and soft. For a while, I was buying the Foodland made white bread which was a $ 1 less and just as good in the beginning but then it started to go down hill… started to taste pretty yucky. The Watanabe bread was also an alternative but it has a weird preservative taste.
If you like the pastries, they bag them and sell them at a discount about 30 minutes before closing. Sometime earlier, sometimes not at all… can’t figure them out at times.
For the price, they also do not have the best customer service… no smiles, eye contact, thank-​you, etc… when I think about it, every location I’ve been to has been pretty consistently non customer service friendly.

This St Germain recently opened on the makai side of Ala Moana Center near See’s Candies. I don’t think very many know it moved from Shirokiya to this location. It’s the same pastries and breads. I had the butter horn. It was delicious. I also bought a long john and had it the next day. It was dry, I think if i ate it the day i bought it, it would have been better.