Saturday, March 19, 2011

Sweet Art by Lucila, nothing sweet or artsy about it.







Being a fairly new resident to South Florida, I have been looking around for well known places with good, delicious food. A place that sells good sweets is hard to come by. Not a lot of people specialize in baking and pastry, so its not common to find a local shop that sells them alone. Sure there's Dunkin Donuts or Krispy Kreme to get your sugar tooth on check, but donuts can get boring after a while. My mother and I have heard of a famous local shop that sells "delicious" cakes and happens to be famous here in Miami. A few days ago we happen to drive by one of their locations so we decided to stop in and check it out. Upon entering the store, nothing really stood out. The place was nearly empty. The front display looks barren. There were a lot of small 4" cakes on display, along with some cookies and other little treats just sitting there. One display case was even empty with just a tres leches sitting there. I did not even want to know if it was still good or not. The cake dummies that were on display in the front window weren't anything attractive. There was an average wedding cake, along with a chocolate cake and a Picasso inspired cake that was lacking art. It tried to be artistic, but just came out looking ugly and badly done. My mom went on to discuss prices for cakes and what was included with the prices. For what the cakes cost and what is actually included with the price, it is definitely not worth it. We take a look at the 10" demo cakes and off the bat, we can tell that the "buttercream" that was supposedly on the cake, was not buttercream at all. It was a cream with a shortening base, basically a cream made from Crisco. We bought one to go to try out and see how the cake itself is. When we get home, we open up the box and take out the cake. Out of the box, the cake had a HUGE dent in the back that was not visible through the display. This was a complete disappointment. Being a business that relies on its reputation, we would've thought that the lady who attended us would've told us about the dent and change it, but that was not the case. I wonder if they sell wedding cakes with dents in them as well? Anywho, on to the cake. We each get a quarter of it, and eat it. Right away we can confirm the cream is not buttercream and in fact it's a shortening based cream. It had no flavor what so ever and felt greasy. The cake was not from a box, it was actually home made, which was surprising from all the disappointments so far, but lacked flavor. It was a rum cake supposedly, but there was no hint of rum. It wasn't moist either, mostly dry. Overall it wasn't a good experience at all. Location lacked art, it was rather plain and boring looking, cakes were the same. Customer service was horrible. Who sells a dented cake? Apparently someone who doesn't care about getting returning customers. Cake was horrible. I have no idea why this place is so famous. I hear Edda's Cake Designs is good, but I also hear they used to be partners with Sweet Art by Lucila and from the experience we've had with Lucila, I dont think Edda will be any better. I will review Edda once I try her cake, but I'm not expecting to be blown away.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Wynwood Art Walk

Hello forum. This is my blog on the Wynwood Art Walk here in Midtown Miami, Florida. Wynwood is an art district and holds an art walk once a month. I had to come to one for my art appreciation class so i can see different types of arts and meet different artists. To be honest, i have never heard of this art walk let alone knew about Wynwood. So on March 13th, 2010 i went with my uncle to the art walk. We got a bit lost on the way but managed to arrive around 7:30pm. We started from on end and walked down to the other end. I wasn't sure what to expect from this since I've never been to an art walk before, but i gotta say, i was amazed at all the amazing art works that were displayed. I have to say my favorite pieces of art are the Wynwood Walls paintings. They were enourmous in size and had many different shapes and colors. Some were wild and others were contemporary. It was an amazing sight. Another favorite of mine were the arts pieces by Peter Tunney. The paintings that stood out to me the most were the ones by Jean Marc Calvet. I learned that the artwork that were displayed in his studio were ideas he worked on while in the military. The art works show anger and have very vivid colors to represent that emotion. It was really outstanding. You could feel the anger by looking at the paintings. There was one studio that i was not too fond of. I forgot the artists name but she used video cameras to make film art. I was not a fan of those. I found them to be completely weird and just not artistic, in my opinion. Now i was not able to speak to the artists because they were either talking to other people for a long time or were not there, but i did get to enjoy the art. So if you find yourself in Miami with nothing to do on the 2nd saturday of the month, find your way over to the Wynwood art district. It was alot of fun and some studios have complimentary drinks. Who can say no to that?