The thing about Lego is that while you’re building one thing, you get inspired to build another thing. While I was finishing Fancy Suites, I started thinking about making another building, based on one of my very first sets, Tea Garden Cafe with Baker’s Van. I had quite a lot of the parts needed, but as it often turns out with these things, I eventually made a bunch of orders both from Lego and Bricklink to get exactly what I needed. So while it’s a much smaller building than Fancy Suites, there’s still a lot of stuff in here.

The original set is interesting. Released in 1974 (ten years before I got the set in used condition), it predates the minifigure and belongs to the old city scale. Despite that, it has a pretty detailed exterior with a literal garden café area. This was the major change I implemented. To fit in a modular city setting, I couldn’t have a garden out front. However, there was plenty of unused room on that carport, so I made a terrace where I reused the red fences. One of the chimneys had to go since my building doesn’t have any ovens in that part, but I kept the TV antenna.

One stupid thing about the original is that it employs some horrible cases of ”stickers across multiple pieces”. With this old a set, which has endured generations of children playing with it and reusing the parts, the stickers will have torn off long ago. This means that both the big bakery sign and the striped red-and-white awning will be missing on 99% of sets. Nowadays we have small enough pieces and SNOT bricks to create a custom sign, as well as enough slopes to make up the awning. The major change on the front is the second floor window. I simply have never seen a two-story café where the second floor doesn’t have huge front windows. It looked very plain in my first design so I came up with the arch to disguise it a bit. Also note the white stones on the pavement as a throwback to the original.

Instead of just a carport I made an alleyway around the back, where the truck loads up on deliveries. The attic stores additional ingredients but is a little complicated to get to. The blue doors are also a reference to the original, and I added the beam above as a realistic way to actually move stuff up and down.

Here’s a closer look at the truck. This is my first custom vehicle, and kind of fun to figure out. Since I didn’t want to repeat Lego’s STAMP error, I made a bread emblem on the front instead. The idea is that the driver is the older brother of the baker and a lazy bum.

Let’s take a look inside. The bottom floor houses the bakery. Having been in a few bakeries in my days, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to achieve. I already put a café in the Café Corner, but this is more focused on bread (and tea). The oven runs on wood and there’s a light brick in there to give that nice warm glow. The old lady runs the bakery with the help of her two sons.

The baking area was inspired by my memories of ”baking cottages” where my mother used to (and still occasionally does) make the most awesome bread in the world. In the back you can see the staircase which uses the same technique as Market Street. The rolling pin build was stolen from Parisian Restaurant.

Upstairs there is plenty of room with five tables. This has the side effect of storing a ton of figures I’m not using for other stuff. You can also see some of the build I used to make the lower roof fit as closely as possible.

Since there is an oven on the bottom floor, there needed to be something to lead the smoke up through here. I added the stove to make it look better, and also provide some heat on cold days. Samurai X doesn’t seem too pleased by her tea though. Sorry, this place doesn’t serve green tea, only Earl Grey.