Lately, I’ve been taking more interest in eating healthy – by this I mean discovering organic restaurants, vegan foods, vegetarian dishes, and finding a good nutritional balance in all of my meals. After starting to exercise on a daily basis, I felt guilty about consuming every type of food without taking the consequences into consideration. As a huge lover of food and all things sugary, eating healthy has been extremely difficult and I found myself lacking the sweet but fattening desserts that I’m so used to indulging in. Because of the lack of sugar in my system, I went out to search for a healthy way to have some of my favorite classic desserts and I found Apple Café Bakery as the perfect solution to my “healthy dessert” dilemma.

Apple Café Bakery is a small but adorable café, with a large baking area in the back of the bakery. The entire bakery smelled of freshly baked bread, which only meant that everything on display came out of the oven not too long before my entrance. Apple Café Bakery has a large selection of baked goods and pastries, and most importantly, a selection of vegan cupcakes. The vegan cupcakes at Apple Café Bakery are extremely popular – many people around the neighborhood are vegetarians or vegans, but not many bakeries offer vegan selections. This makes Apple Café Bakery the perfect hot-spot for vegans and people of all tastes. I was recommended to try one of their vegan cupcakes and their banana pudding, the most popular items on the menu.

The banana pudding that I tried was phenomenal. Banana pudding is one of my favorite desserts, but I often find that many bakeries go overboard with the sweetness in the flavoring and there always tends to be an imbalance between the bananas, pudding, and wafers. However, Apple Café Bakery’s banana pudding was sweet and rich, filled with fresh bananas covered in creamy pudding. The wafers within the pudding were crisp on the outer layer, but soft and fluffy on the inside, giving a good balance to the overall soft pudding. I couldn’t stop myself from pigging out with my cup of pudding, becoming more addicted to its delicious mix of bananas and wafers. The vegan cupcake that I had was a vanilla cupcake with strawberry frosting. I haven’t tried a variety of vegan cupcakes throughout my journey of food, but I could understand why Apple Café Bakery was so popular amongst vegan eaters. Their vegan cupcake was sweet, fluffy, light, and moist – the four qualities that I value the most when faced with a beautiful cupcake. Decorated with a simple strawberry frosting, the cupcake really didn’t need fancy decorations or sprinkles to add sweet flavors; it was purely delicious on its own.

Vegan Cupcake & Non-Vegan Banana Pudding

Everything made in Apple Café Bakery is made fresh and on the spot, so the bakery serves only the best. With friendly service and regular customers, Apple Café Bakery is definitely a local favorite and has become one of my favorites as well. Apple Café Bakery also offers free Wi-Fi to customers and is a great place for people just drop by and pick up their baked goods or actually sit down and enjoy a fresh cup of coffee.

Check out their website at http://applecafebakery.com

Use this coupon from Campus Clipper to buy a pastry and get one free!

Becky Kim, Queens College, Read my blog and follow me on Twitter
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Welcome to Jackson Diner!

An Indian Buffet at lunch time, this might make you think that the food quality would be less. Even I did not expect too much at first. Maybe it would surpass the quality of Chinese buffets, but would it reach restaurant quality for only $11?

I could only find out by trying it out.

Entering Jackson Diner I noticed they have a color theme of red and brown. The outside of the restaurant is misleading. While it seems cheap with plastic looking red doors and signs promoting their Indian Buffet, the inside is full of rich browns and little red accents. The buffet is to your right, the bar to our right. Along the walls you see chimes, sculptures, and other cultural art pieces. Looking closer to these pieces you can see how much work went into their tiny metallic details or wood cut images. The buffet is an interesting experience in itself. Lining the wall are insets containing cultural artworks. A glistening green almost mosaic centers the buffet section with art pieces and statues in square insets to it’s left and right. The owner Mr. Singh is a sweet man. He explained how he purchased all the pieces personally from India. In a bustling place like this I felt that the artwork could be overlooked. Coming from a family of artists and craft dabblers, the delicate details caught my eye.

While picking your buffet dishes to the background music of Bollywood songs and people chatting, mostly Indian but there are plenty of non- Indian customers as well; they have grouped the dishes from a straight line towards the entrance, the first half being vegetarian and the latter half being the meat section. At the very end is salad and rice pudding. A very simple, thoughtful and efficient presentation.

The best thing about a buffet is that if you do not know what to get you can just settle for a little bit of everything. First plate was rice, with tandoori chicken, chicken tiki marsala, cabbage, Curry Pakoda, and salad. They also give you unlimited naan and water. As colorful as the plate was it all surprisingly balanced each other out.

A dish of many delicious wonders

The Naan was soft and just a little crispy at the edges. Just the way I like it. No cheap pita bread-like substances here.

The curry and chicken tiki marsala worked well with the rice. I would have liked a little bit of each on my fork and then follow it with a bit of cabbage. The cabbage was plain but had a slight flavor, as cabbage should. It balanced out the powerful flavors from the chicken dishes.

While people always say to me that they love Chicken Tiki Marsala what won me over was the Tandoori chicken. The deep red color led me to think it would be spicy but the level of spice was just enough to tease your tongue but not burn it. The chicken was tender and I could almost peel sections of it off because it was that well cooked. There was a bone in the center which usually turns me off but the bone was soft and broken. It was easy to take out and added to the chicken’s well cooked testament. I have gone to Italian restaurants that charge $15 dollars per dish (that being cheap) and was given dry unlovable chicken. For $11 I could have this Tandoori chicken all I wanted. Jackson Diner really impressed me.

The rice pudding was the last thing I had to try. I could find nothing wrong with it. Inside they had grapes and cashews, which added a very sweet touch.

The summary of my visit to Jackson Diner and trying out their $11 buffet: Great food. Great price. Lovely art pieces. Sweet Owner. I’m definitely coming back.

For more pictures and details on the food at the Jackson Diner check out my blog!

Sophia, Rochester Institute of Technology

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