Best Buns Bakery and Café

I came here for brunch with my family. There's plenty of parking in the lot that's reserved for all the restaurants in the area. Inside, you order at the counter. The inside was super bright and spacious with plenty of seating.

I ordered an iced chai, a ham/egg/cheese croissant, and a cinnamon raisin danish. My family also tried the chocolate croissant, coffeecake muffin, and the fried chicken biscuit. The breads were so warm, soft and fluffy! I loved my savory croissant and the danish was also delicious and not overly sweet. My favorite had to be the chocolate croissant though, it was so rich!! Overall, really good breakfast spot and definitely want to come back.

TL;DR: Online pickup orders are nonsense, am extremely confused by poor and inconsistent labeling /description of products. Food is fine.

THE ONLINE ORDERING SYSTEM:

If you order online there's two options. Curbside, and delivery. That's it. No in-store pickup. But if you are driving there yourself, you may as well roll a D20 to predict what happens.

20 Crit success! They actually deliver it curbside, promptly.
17-19 you'll get a notification to check in, and they'll deliver it shortly.
15-16 you'll get a notification to check in, but nothing happens and they won't notice you, ever, no matter how long your car is pulled up at the sign for curbside.
10-14 no notification to check in, they won't notice you, ever.
2-9 the curbside sign isn't there, you check in, they won't notice you, ever.
1 Crit fail! The sign isn't there, no one notices you, just give up and go inside already, you should've done that from the start not matter what you rolled.

Thing is, I do not mind going inside. But I do mind being forced to select a service and then rarely having that service actually be delivered upon. Sometimes I go in and multiple employees are just hanging out, two customers sitting inside, with my order on the table and my car being ignored. That's FINE. I encourage people to have breaks at work. We'd live in a dystopian nightmare if people couldn't take it easy. Sometimes I go in and they're busy while ignoring me. That's ALSO FINE. If they're busy, they're busy. I just want consistency.

Let me pick a non-curbside option! I don't want the one person who actually cares enough to deliver on the curbside service to be on the lookout for my car when I'm just walking inside, anyway. I don't want anyone's time wasted: including and especially the employees.

THE FOOD:

I got few complaints about the food here. GAR is pretty consistent. You get what you get, I avoid cupcakes because they aren't always baked to time. Still, there's a lack of clarity and consistency with the menu. Some items are clearly listed as containing nuts, with asterisks around the nut information (though sometimes it's double and sometimes single, why is there zero consistency here?). Other items lack any indication.

Yogurt Parfait currently is listed as "with homemade granola" but does that granola include nuts? I have no idea!

Penne Pasta Salad is listed as "with grilled veggies & parmesan" but doesn't indicate at all that it's pesto based or that it's got nearly no veg. Is that nut-free pesto? Who knows? Not me! I can certainly find out by feeding it to my friend Bryan and waiting for him to die or not, but honestly who's got time for that when you've spent 20+ years steering him away from his allergens? Sorry, Bryan. I want you to live. No penne for you.

Salads tend to list nuts and allow removal, cookies all list if there's nuts, the Mini Carrot Bunt Cake lists nuts, but the carrot cake cupcake doesn't. By reading the menu alone it's confusing.

Just be consistent, please!

Good baked goods. We had:
- Honey chicken biscuit - biscuit was nothing particularly mind-blowing, but the texture was nicely soft yet also crispy. Fried chicken was good and warm, although the honey was a bit too sweet for me
- Chocolate croissant - the chocolate filling was WOW amazing! 6 stars out of 5 for this filling. Soooo rich and velvety dark. Not too sweet at all. Although the croissant doesn't compare to those in France, the bread texture was still beautifully airy and flaky. The chocolate filling is the real star of the taste bud show though. Really hits the spot for me. I wouldn't be surprised if it's European dark chocolate because it tasted so rich and high-quality without being too sweet.
- Morning bun - sweet and dense (but not too dense) and fluffy at the same time. Nice crispy crust
- Mocha - eh decent, tasted quite light

Bakery /Coffee located right next door to Patsys . Thought we'd pick up some dessert. We chose carrot cake and a cookie. The carrot cake was really delicious. Maybe next time we will try other pastries!

Delicious bacon egg and cheese breakfast sammy. Wish I had more room to try the fresh baked breads.

Best Buns is part of the Great American Restaurant Group. It's next to Patsy's. And like all the other restaurants, this place does not disappoint. I ordered a breakfast sandwich on a croissant and a chai tea latte. The person who took my order answered all of the questions I had. Then I took a seat while waiting for my order to be prepared. I received a wrong sandwich and my order was corrected in a timely fashion.

A friend highly recommended the breakfast sammies, but I found the bacon-egg-cheese to be extremely salty. Unclear if the chef used a heavy hand when salting the eggs or if the bacon itself was the problem (I know...it pains me to write that). Even for someone who loves savory, there is such a thing as too much salt.

Liked the crunch of the bread, so I purchased a loaf of the poblano cheddar to go. Will return to try the espresso chocolate crinkle cookie and almond-walnut croissant, the latter of which was completely sold out by 8:30am...so it must be good! Ample, easy parking. Seating area kept clean. Friendly staff.

Our Christmas morning tradition is cinnamon rolls. We usually make them from scratch, but with 2 little kids I decided to simplify this year for a less stressful Christmas season and was on the hunt for the best cinnamon roll in Nova. We decided to give Best Buns a try. I made the trek from Herndon first thing on Christmas Eve. Parking was easy and they had plenty of cinnamon rolls. I also got my husband and I a fruit and a cheese danish to try for a Christmas Eve treat. I've yet to find a local bakery that does a good cheese danish (my favorite baked good along with cinnamon rolls) and am happy to report that Best Buns fills this void! We stored our cinnamon rolls in the fridge and popped them in the oven Christmas AM. They were so delicious -10/10. Best Buns cinnamon rolls will be our new Christmas AM tradition (and Mother's Day!).

Honey chicken biscuit - warm and juicy sandwich! A taste of honey in the morning is a great way to wake up.
Chocolate croissant - which I barely tasted because my partner ate most of it.... But I can see how it is delicious for her.
Morning bun - evenly distributed sugar all over and it was delicious to bite each time.
mocha - light and not as much on chocolate flavor. That's alright. I've had better one at other cafes.

Service is friendly and quick. It gets busy in the morning.

I made a purchase online only to be told half of my order was unavailable. It's been 3 weeks and i have not been refunded for half the order that i never received