- A free coffee and chewy, courtesy of a Zomato promotion. (Yup, I got it for free when it would otherwise have been $5.00 - $5.50).
- An offer of 12 free chewys from Chewy Junior via Yelp -- the business responded to the inconvenience to me during my most recent visit. A rare occurrence nowadays, to be honest, that businesses take customer complaints seriously.
In April last year, price was $3.00 - $3.50 based on filling. Now it's $3.15 - $3.85 based on topping.
- Overall my feeling about the price for what you get hasn't really changed. You have to really like this product to be willing to pay for it, same with gourmet donuts at Cartems, for example. And it has its own style and charm, setting it apart from other pastry in its price range.
- Special decorative toppings are available, but you basically need to call the boss to get pricing on those. Their instagram account has examples.
- To make it more affordable, there are various promotions you can try:
- Belly, which you can sign up for right there at the cash register, and in under a couple of minutes. You may already have a Belly account as it's at 7-Elevens as well.
- Posting and hashtagging pictures on Instagram. They pull one random winner weekly to get a half dozen free chewys.
Get your coffee elsewhere, maybe at the Tim Hortons not too far away on West Hastings at Seymour.
Since it was at the end of the day, I inquired whether "freshly baked" chewys were any different or better, and surprisingly the answer was no. The main reason is that when they first come out, they are fragile and therefore not suitable for filling or having toppings painted on them, so they have to be allowed to cool anyway. Therefore, according to the clerk, it didn't really matter.
All chewys are made fresh everyday, so at the end of the day, everything gets chucked. Which is also why the counters start looking kind of bare. That said, if there is a particular type you really, really, want, they typically have lots of empty chewys on standby and may take special requests, as they did with us.
For my complimentary-thanks-to-Zomato chewy, I went with one of the cheapest ones, with chocolate and zebra stripes on top. Knowing about the chewy, I bit gently, and there is some chewiness but not enough that you have to struggle. It's quite thin, and the filling is not exactly water, but definitely less viscous than honey.
TIP: Keep your chewy tilted up. And make sure napkins are on hand.
The two girls I was with weren't prepared and made a huge mess. Nothing on their clothes, fortunately, but one of them somehow ended up with a bit of spray in her hair!
The chocolate filling definitely had chocolate flavour, but you can tell from its pale coffee colour that it wasn't going to be strongly chocolatey. Don't expect to be drinking molten chocolate, which might make it too rich anyway to be honest.
Finally -- and am I asking for too much here? -- some of the chewys were, well, ugly. Ugly-shaped. Maybe it's unavoidable from the baking process. Maybe the cratering is sometimes too deep and ruins the smooth shape of the topping. I'm not docking points for this, but... well, just sayin'.
TIP: Frozen Chewys are also pretty good!
I took one home for my mom and she didn't want the whole thing, so she insisted on cutting it in half. Because I told her the cream would pour out, she froze it first. Turns out, the shell holds up pretty well and the inside has a texture of ice cream when you do it and thaw it slightly in the fridge after. See below for cross-section picture.
Thanks for the tip on Chewy's, will check it out. If you like cream puffs and possibly frozen ones, swing by Fujiya on Clark and check the cold case to the left of the front door for packets of six. They get their cream puffs frozen but they are mighty tasty. Go early in the day if you can as they sell out routinely.
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