Good news for your sweet tooth: Your favorite local treats just got easier to procure.
Those who crave Connect's Best of Savannah desserts (for five years running!) will find delicious satisfaction in the knowledge that Lulu's Chocolate Bar, the charming downtown destination where craft cocktails meet fabulous confections, has a new retail space on the southside.
LuluCakes, located the former Custom Cakes on Hodgson Memorial, offers up whole versions of famous Lulu's favorites like Strawberry Suspension Cake, Peanut Butter Pie, Flourless Chocolate Torte and the heavenly White Chocolate Chip Cheesecake as well as single snack sizes of the bar's brownies and cookies. You can't purchase a glass of champagne at the counter, but the kitchen staff is happy to fill custom orders.
"Any seasonal flavors featured on the bar menu are also available, so if you taste something and you want more, you don't have to drive back downtown," says Rebecca Radovich, who opened the dessert bar with business partner Janine Finn in 2007.
When their bustling tavern outgrew its in-house bakery last year, they moved operations to the commercial kitchen to keep up with demand. The sweet treats are driven downtown in a refrigerated truck daily, but it made sense to keep a few cakes on hand—especially since curious folks kept popping their heads in to inquire about carrying out a pie or two.
"We've been in the kitchen for a little over a year, and we decided to open it to the public," says Radovich.
"Now all the people who wish they can stop by the bar to take a cake to a party or make a special order, you can just drive up and voila!, it's ready."
So are our forks—yum!
Just as Lulu's is branching southward, another successful sweet purveyor moves north: Maison de Macarons has opened a lovely little storefront next to the Lucas Theater in the former Tier Cakes.
It's been less than a year since Connect first reported on these cookie maestros, but clearly, business partners and BFFs Amy Shippy and Laura Hale have been plenty busy. A constant, cheery presence at community events, the pair has won over Savannah's palates and picked up large scale accounts, including Gulfstream and Jet Blue.
The original Eisenhower location still thriving, and having the use of two bakeries will help keep customers in Savannah and beyond stocked with macarons.
"We have five bakers now, and our internet business has just gone crazy," shares Shippy in between batches of the colorful meringue sandwiches. "I would say we've tripled production since last March."
Maison de Macarons shared space with Mabel Francis Potter's Cupcake Emporium for several months last fall as its owners tested the downtown market. To no one's surprise, their salted caramel, strawberry and robin's egg blue vanilla flavors were runaway hits with tourists and locals alike. They'd barely washed the bowls after a busy holiday season before setting up shop near Reynolds Square.
Now that their new store is up and running, the macaron ladies are already looking to what's next.
"People have been talking to us about expanding to Bluffton, to Hilton Head, to Charleston," marvels Shippy.
"We're just taking one day at a time."
