Royal Bakery & Cafe (CLOSED)

At the beginning of this month my employer moved our offices to Nampa, a place I haven't spent any serious time in since I was a kid and Karcher Mall was the epitome of local shopping.  In preparation for the move, I started researching eateries within a small radius of the new office.  I already had a list of almost a dozen when, a few days before the move, I accompanied my roommate to Nampa for a factory recall repair on her car.  I brought my own car along so we wouldn't be trapped in the dealership waiting room, and we decided to drive around and take a look at some of the places I'd been researching.  On our way back to the dealership, she suggested taking a quick detour through the little shopping complex around the Edwards theater across from the Idaho Center, and that's where we came across Royal Bakery & Cafe.  I pretty much fell instantly in love and decided that they would be my next review.  And yes, for those of you who pay attention to these things, they are the place that Boise Weekly wrote up this week.  The place has sat there for YEARS, and the Weekly publishes a review at the exact same time that I'm working on one?  What are the odds?!

I've mentioned this before, but I don't like posting a review of a place that someone else has just written up.  I may have visited a place three times in the last two weeks and be in the midst of my writing, when suddenly the Statesman or the Weekly publish a piece on it.  Maybe it's silly, maybe not, but it just sucks away my enthusiasm for it.  I don't want to come across like "I saw someone else's review, it made me want to try the place, and now here's MY review."  In these rare cases (there are few enough people writing about restaurants in the Valley that it doesn't happen that often), I usually just wait a couple of months before posting my write-up.  Still, I suppose it was only a matter of time before the luxury of that choice was taken away from me.  You see, the Weekly's piece on Royal Bakery ended with the information that the proprietor is considering closing down in a couple of months to focus on catering and studies so if I wait a couple of months I may very well be posting an "in memoriam" review.  I want them to be tempted to keep their doors open, and if I can lend to that by drawing some attention (and hopefully business) to them, then that's what I've gotta do.



El Gallo Giro (Kuna)

I've not been looking forward to this, because I'm expecting some griping and a few insults.  Sigh.  Let's just get it over with, eh?