You miss pressing your face against Scanway Catering & Pastry’s Quinpool Road storefront to get a closer look, don’t you? This summer marks the return of Scanway to the food and retail scenes, it’ll be taking over 1567 Grafton Street right next door to its new sibling the Stubborn Goat Gastropub (1579 Grafton Street). “I’m looking to limit my travel time,” laughs Geir Simensen, executive chef at the Goat, and co-owner of Scanway. He’s currently working with new business partner and familiar Halifax face Ray Bear to turn the former Halifax Bead & Metal Clay into not just a destination for amazing cakes and pastries for your parties and cravings, but also a cafe.
“The Goat has gone very well for us here, and we’re excited to add a different component to the street.” The new Scanway, set to be ready for visitors in a month’s time, will have room for 20 people to sit in and enjoy sweets and coffee or a sandwich and a glass of wine, but is also going to be a key player in the patio game. It’ll take over a sunseeker’s prime spot, Bikram Yoga‘s patio (above Sicilian Pizza), and while the menus are still being sorted Siemensen says he’s got his hands on a big Italian gelato machine. Imagine that with fresh blueberries! “Ray and I have so much enthusiasm for this it’s hard to nail it down,” he says of what to expect from the menu, but teases of delights like salmon pastrami on homemade crusty bread and fresh-baked doughnuts.
Looks like there’ll be many more reasons to gawk at this spot than beautiful cake.
This article appears in May 22-28, 2014.
How do you make a small fortune in the restaurant industry? Start with a large one and then hire Ray Bear. #foodcostkiller
Should mention that the patio is just outside Bikram Yoga Halifax. Greatest patio in the city! Gets sun all day long! We are so excited to have the space being used to it’s full potential!
HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE!!!!!!!! We just had the worst experience with Scanway Catering. We ordered The Rich Chocolate Fudge cake for our wedding last week that did cost us $450 and we had the worst cake ever. Extremely dry cake, no flavour, cream was not creamy, butter cream on top was just shortening with sugar, we had the cake left on the plates by our guests which was really embarrassing. I had people telling me they think it was a 2-3 weeks old cake 😠. We took the cake back to the bakery (more than 3/4 of it since we had to stop serving it) and the customer care doesn’t exist in the vocabulary of this company. We waited for a call back from the manager or the owner which never happened. When we called back the manager said that they think the cake was “great”. In other words they wont do anything to fix this situation. When my husband went back to speak with them in the middle of the day nobody was to be found so we asked for the cake back the girl over the counter said the cake is not there anymore. At the pressure of my husband that either someone comes to talk to him or he requires the cake back by miracle the cake was there !!!! Extremely disappointed experience we had and we hope nobody will go through this in their most important day. They dont care about the client satisfaction but just to cash the money from you!!!!