Everything Glendale

Filed Under: Bakeries, Cuban Cuisine, Downtown Glendale, Food, Pastries, Porto's Bakery, Restaurant Reviews

[Editor's Note: At least three of Everything Glendale's bloggers planned to write about Porto's Bakery without knowledge of each other's intentions. Since I love the idea of different writers providing unique individual takes of the same establishments, more Porto's posts will be forthcoming. Mister B filed his review first. Enjoy. —P.G.]

Mention the word "Porto's" to anyone in the Glendale area and you are likely to get a single response: "Mmm."

Located on Brand Boulevard just north of California Street, Porto's Bakery's footprint is massive. The 20,000 square foot facility is one half sparkling clean cafeteria-style breakfast and lunch venue and one half award-winning, hugely popular, weekend crowd-creating bakery, serving up eye popping goodies like Guava & Cheese Strudel (a.k.a. "Refugiado"), Cheese Rolls (if you haven't had a cheese roll from Porto's put it down now as a New Year's Resolution), fresh breads, and its most famous product: cakes. In addition to serving as the place to custom order cakes for special occasions, there is a host of ready-made cakes, ranging from specialty Cuban sponge cakes to Mango Mousse, sitting daily, like pretty little maidens behind the gleaming glass counters, waiting for a proper introduction.

The bakery had its humble beginnings in Cuba, where the original owner began selling cakes from her house. When the popularity of her food caused cars to clog the street in front of her home with traffic, the bakery was born of necessity. The growth of the business, its journey to Glendale, and the family that has managed to nurture it makes a fascinating history, detailed with straightforward, unsentimental language on the bakery's simple, yet seductive website.

For all of its imposing physical stature, the first thing one notices about this giant bakery is that it manages to maintain a cozy ambiance. You'd never know it looking in from the street. Hordes of devotees line up every weekend to partake of Porto's concoctions, filling the sidewalk like American Idol hopefuls at a casting call.

But once inside, the chaos quickly morphs into a warm dance of bodies, with the ultra-polite wait staff doing pirouettes en route to each table, full trays of food resting on their arms. No untrained prepubescents here—the staff is professional, knowledgeable, and efficient. Everything in Porto's reinforces an unpretentious emphasis on quality.

Walking straight into the dining area, one moves with surprising fluidity through perversely happy diners of all shapes and hues, smiling over sandwiches and sharing tables (the question "Are you using that chair?" is greeted here not with cold avoidance, but a familiar smile—once inside the hearth of Porto's, workaday walls seem to melt off customers faster than the sugar-infested Napoleons melt in your mouth). Just ahead there is often a formidable cue gathered at the cafe express line. But the line moves fast and it's well roped off and organized (if you're sensing a pattern here, you're correct). Once to the front you can grab a quick pastry, a chocolate covered strawberry, say, or order up lunch proper—one customer favorite being the "medianoche," named literally for being a midnight snack pleaser. The medianoche features ham, roasted pork, and Swiss cheese served with mayonnaise, mustard, and pickles on a toasted sweet roll.

Finally, for me, there is one recurring reason to make Porto's an early morning weekend ritual: it's not the beautiful cakes or the dazzling array of dessert slices. It is, drumroll please, the guacamole and cheese omelet on croissant. This simple breakfast sandwich delights on several grounds. First, let's just look at the basic description. You are getting an omelet on a croissant! With guacamole! And before you imagine a Denny's-inspired fiasco, whereby some flounder shaped, greasy omelet is sticking out of a petite, hardened dinner roll, let me assure you: the size is perfect. Not small, not ridiculous. The omelet is folded with care and nestled snugly in its twisted French bed of warm goodness. Then, there is the guacamole. No watered down El Pollo Loco glop here. Fresh ingredients sing out from the generous, chunky, green portion, with the cilantro and garlic mixed to a kind of unfair how-did-they-do-that? perfection. This minor detail of the garlic and the cilantro bears emphasis. How many of us have, on odd occasions, arrogantly tossed together a bowl of guacamole with the thought, How hard can this be?, only to receive in return the answer: Apparently very hard! Every time I have the guacamole and cheese omelet on croissant I find myself on the phone later in the day, telling someone new about how they manage to put in the exact amount of garlic needed! No more, no less.

Okay, such things merit highlights in the week of a middle school teacher, but what can I say? Porto's makes me want to talk. And this, to me, is the hallmark of Porto's: when you eat there, you want other people to eat there. It inspires goodwill. Heaven, as it turns out, is no place to dine alone.

Porto's Bakery
315 N. Brand Boulevard
Glendale, CA 91203
818.956.5996
www.portosbakery.com

Average Entrees:
$3-$5

Hours:
Monday-Saturday: 6:30 a.m.-7:00 p.m.
Sunday: 7:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.