Photo by Leslie Berestein Rojas/KPCC
The grand-opening line at at the new Porto's in Downey, November 9, 2010
In most of L.A. county’s Latino suburbs, the news of a bakery opening isn’t usually anything to get excited about, let alone anything that makes the gossip circuit. Not the case in Downey, though, home to a cafecito-drinking, pastelito-loving community of Cuban immigrants and their descendants, my family included.
And, until now, a one-Cuban-bakery town.
For those not familiar with Cuban eating habits, here is why bakeries matter: We love the starch. Doughy bread embedded with chicharrones, flaky ground-meat pastelitos and guava-and-cream cheese pastries (the latter once nicknamed “Marielitos” after participants of the 1980 Mariel boatlift, for reasons I can’t explain), deep-fried starchy things like papas rellenas (mashed potato balls stuffed with meat, which taste far better than they sound). Bakeries also sell coffee, which we drink lots of. Bakeries are sacred.
For the past decade, Downey’s Cuban-Americans have flocked to the Tropicana Bakery, a homey coffeehouse-style place decorated with nostalgic old-Havana photos that serves as an impromtu gathering place for friends who bump into each other when buying bread or pastries. Retirees sip coffee and gossip; their adult children drop by for a bakery box of nostalgia to go. But for more than a year now, I’ve heard the chisme at family gatherings: “Porto’s viene a Downey!” (Porto’s is coming to Downey!)
Yes, Porto’s, the Glendale-based undisputed heavyweight of the L.A. Cuban bakery scene. And yesterday it happened: the grand opening of Porto’s spiffy new Downey location, its third, tucked inside an impressive modernist gem of a building that looks absolutely nothing like old Havana.
Could two big Cuban bakeries survive in this town? What would this mean, for Downey, for its beloved Tropicana, for tradition, for all of us?
