FYI: we stopped in at Atelier Colibre in late April 2019. The rvw I wrote up is summarized here:
" Atelier Colibre is the essence of a personal operation. Ms. Hawkins bakes in the back and sells in the front. The long, single level display case holds a modest assortment of pastries and a few loaves of levain. Unlike many bakeries, Colibri is only open for lunch, staying open until 7:00 p.m. on weekdays. Being a tiny operation, it’s best to come as early as possible. We arrived just after lunch, and even so there were only two types of croissants, three flavors of mini-tarts, two pastries and a savory mini-pie – just a few available of each. We bought one of everything but the Napoleon pastry, to try.
Mini-tarts were good: a dark chocolate and an almond. Almond/raspberry only had thin layer of jam; we preferred the straightforward almond.
Mini pies, sweet and savory: okay but a lot of pastry crust without much filling, so they tend to be dry.
Plain croissant: Small and baked a dark brown. Cultured butter flavor evident; interior well-layered. Not quite the level of our favs Parker-Lusseau/Monterey and Rotha/Albany but definitely able to eat plain (no toasting/no butter), which is our criteria for taste-testing ‘apples to apples’.
Chocolate croissant: Good, a little short on the filling, perhaps. We don’t like too much chocolate in it but this didn’t quite make it to five-star level. Give it 4.5 stars.
Atelier Colibri is a good little neighborhood bakery. A little adjustment in what Ms. Hawkins offers might be in order, but it’s very early days yet as the bakery just opened in late 2018. It definitely has promise. The ingredients are very good quality and Hawkins has the classical techniques down pat.
The biggest issue is that there is not a lot of variety at any time. The owner bakes only what she thinks she can sell that day, which is laudable but also self-defeating in the long run. She is a talented baker, but perhaps not an experienced business manager. Rotha/Albany suffers from the same issue. You can only keep sending away people empty-handed for so long, until they won’t even bother trying to return.
Colibri was further from the downtown San Leandro area than I expected, so it took us about 18 minutes to drive across the city from our lunch restaurant. It’s located on the west side of the 880 freeway, past where the Home Depot is located but in the same general area.
We hope Atelier Colibri succeeds. It’s a cute little shop, and is offering a better quality product than we usually see in the East Bay. Ms. Hawkins is following her dream, and with some luck hopefully success will come. "
2307 International Blvd Oakland, Ca