dessert place
- Thread starter susanna76
- Start date
A cake shop?
Without context, it's a guessing game. What does this "dessert place" sell? Is it a sit-down restaurant?
Edit: We don't have "cake shops" in Canada.
Ah, right. It's not a candy store. It's a place where you can get cheesecake, apple pie, and whatever else you may have as staples (do let me know what those are) in your part of the world.
If you mean a store dedicated to cakes, pies, breads, etc., we call them bakeries. That being said, you can get all those things in a supermarket, as well, because most large supermarkets have in-store bakeries.
I think the most common place for baked desserts in America is called a "bakery". In America a bakery isn't so common for bread except for special breads so they usually bake cakes and pies to keep in business as they don't sell much bread. In America we use the word "pie" for what the British call tart and pie. We don't use the term "tart". They are both called "pie" in America. We have a few cookie shops but they are often a bit special not very common. A bakery and a cookie shop both might sell brownies. Somebody from France told me they consider brownies to be very American.
You can't go wrong with baker's (or bakery) in the UK either.
To me, a bakery would cover all manner of baked goods. If you were talking about somewhere that exclusively made fancy, decorated cakes (e.g. wedding cakes etc.) I would not call it a bakery, but a cake shop, as Ewie suggested, or perhaps a cake decorator's.
I checked some websites of what are called "cake shops" in America. I didn't see much in the way of pies at them. Some do bake cookies as well as cakes. Here is a list from one of them.
In Canada, bakeries do all that as well. Many bakeries put a wedding cake in their window as an ad.
I think it depends on what region of the country you're in and what kind of store you're talking about. To me, "that dessert place" means "that cafe that specializes in sweet things where we can sit and have coffee and cake". It does not refer to my idea of a standard bakery, which is a take out counter rather than a cafe. (There are also businesses that call themselves bakeries that do have lots of seating and drinks and so forth, but that's not what I automatically imagine if you say the word 'bakery'.) There are also plenty of areas that have dessert places that serve standard things like cheesecake and bakeries of many kinds that specialize in either bread or cakes or cookies or Greek pastries or Italian pastries, etc.
For the type of business I think you're referring to, 'dessert place' (sans scare quotes) is the term I'd use; it's not a substitute for some other term.
If I did not use the word "bakery", I would refer to a place that specialized in selling sweet baked goods, along with perhaps coffee, and that intended these things for on-premises consumption, as a "patisserie" or a "pastry shop".