Baiten

Baiten functions as a take-away dessert spot on the patio of Tamari Bar, their sit-down restaurant. They primarily serve desserts, specializing in soft serve and fruit sandos. I recently tried Baiten for the first time and wanted to try one of each between the soft serve and fruit sando, opting for the matcha soft serve and strawberry cream sandwich. The sandwiches are all premade, with the only difference between the soft serves being the syrups, all coming with the same vanilla base. There was only one person behind the window, and it felt like she didn't have much interest in serving us. She might've been having a long day, but she didn't really talk to us at all when we were ordering. She asked what we wanted and didn't say anything else in the entire interaction. Everything was pretty quick. It took about a minute for her to construct each soft serve. Right outside the window is a little patio. There are a few tables, some with little stools, some without. It made for a decent spot to enjoy our dessert, but could definitely get cramped even with a few groups. I tried my sandwich first, not wanting the lingering flavor of the matcha to overpower the delicateness of the strawberries and cream. There is a full "regular" size and a small "cube" size for the sandwiches. Before ordering it, I didn't really realize it, but the cube size was very small. While trying to savor it, I still finished it within three to four bites. It wasn't anything super special. The cream was light and whipped to a nice consistency, while the strawberries were sweet and on the softer side. The bread was nice, but because it was so small, it could not contain all of the ingredients very well. This made for pretty unbalanced bites that were somewhat unpleasant to eat. Also, for five dollars, I thought it was a little pricey, but I was still happy with the sandwich overall. The soft serve was a lot more mediocre to me. I would actually say the soft serve on its own probably would have been great, but it was drowning in syrup. The syrup did not have a great flavor or texture to me at all, with the matcha flavor tasting super artificial. A lot of the syrup is also dumped on the top and bottom of the soft serve, making for extremely high concentrations in the first bites. And because it was filled over the top, it was really hard to mix the syrup in evenly. This made it really hard to appreciate the soft serve, with the syrup completely overpowering both the texture and flavor. Once I got to the bottom of the cup, it became pretty much inedible just because of how much syrup there was. With some minor adjustments, I think Baiten could be an excellent go-to choice for dessert in Seattle. However, at the moment, I feel like its competitors like Indigo Cow do it a lot better. I wouldn't say I had a bad experience at Baiten, but it definitely didn't warrant a trip back in the near future.