Sweet Hut Bakery & Cafe, Doraville GA

Readers may recall that last week we included a chapter about our fun trip to BoBo Garden. Before we arrived, I had half a mind to pop across the street for dessert after we finished, because I’d been wanting to go to Sweet Hut with Marie since I first read about it. Her sweet tooth is, after all, sweeter than mine. This is a really neat little place that opened at the beginning of 2012 in the same strip mall as Quõc Húóng and the just-closed Fil-Am Star, a place that I really wanted to try. We didn’t go then, because we left BoBo Garden completely stuffed, and I resolved to go the next time we were in the area.

Now, one thing that’s unavoidable about all these joints on Buford Highway: they all kind of look the same. There’s a strip mall ordinariness to many of these restaurants that we have featured, and occasionally it’s made more drab and downmarket by passing furniture down a chain of different owners. We really should have photographed the interior of Sweet Hut when we visited one Friday last month. Bella Vivere, linked below, has some pretty good pictures and you should have a look at those, because this place is so neat. (Or visit their web site, I suppose.) It’s like a funky purple coffee shop that people forty years ago thought might have been “futuristic.” Imagine Stanley Kubrick looking at the set designs for that lounge in the second act of 2001 and telling the designers, “Yes, that’s good, only let’s make it purple and orange.”

We were actually on our way to dinner, but the traffic pattern completely confounded me and it was the stretch of the top end perimeter between Ash-D and Spaghetti Junction that had no backup at all for once, so we were running very early and stopped by for a drink before dinner. Oh, and a hot dog.

We looked over the aisles of pastries – guests serve themselves, putting wax paper on a tray and taking some serving tongs – and realized that one of the aisles was savory treats. The completely bizarre little hot dog under a giant mountain of freshly-baked bread with some kind of glaze demanded to be sampled. Marie had a sweet pastry and a cup of something hot, a green tea or other. I had the basic Sweet Hut Milk Tea, priced nicely at $2.75. You can get one or two add-ins to a bubble or milk tea here for no charge, things like jellies and puddings and tapioca pearls, but I’m not all that familiar with the many tastes and flavors of milk teas yet and am still keeping it simple.

So, let’s say that you and some friends are ready to start tackling Buford Highway and learning more about all the many exciting restaurants on this corridor. After thinking about it, I’d recommend that you and your crowd use Sweet Hut as a meeting place to start off your trips, because this is a great and comfortable location to meet, with lots of parking and a really good staff. Get your crew together here, have a pastry and a drink, pull up your Urbanspoon mobile ap and some of the good blogs in Atlanta who have been covering this corridor and go from here. I like this place so much that Marie and I might stop in for a drink fairly regularly when we’re next on this side of town.

Other blog posts about Sweet Hut:

Bella Vivere (May 17 2012)
Review Atlanta (June 13 2012)
MW Eats (Aug. 15 2012)

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