Lusa Bakery
1111 Wellington St. W.,
613-728-5252, lusabakery.ca
Open: Tuesday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., closed Monday
Access: step to front door
Deliveries: ubereats.com, doordash.com
Fiesta Manila Bakery and Filipino Store
1800 Bank St., 613-
260-7171,fiesta-manila-bakery-and-pilipino-store.business.site
Open: Weekdays 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Deliveries by staff are available
Caribbean Sweets and Treats
369 Lacasse Ave., 613-744-2446,
caribbean-sweets-treats.business.site
Open: Tuesday to Friday noon to 6 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday
Deliveries: ubereats.com, doordash.com
Fair warning to anyone Zooming with me in the near future: I will likely have powdered sugar residue on my face and custard stains on my hoodie.
The slovenliness is not simply a symptom of my pandemic fatigue. It’s an occupational hazard, but ultimately my fault. That said, it might be fair to say the nice lady working at Lusa Bakery in Hintonburg gave me a little nudge this week when she told me of the deal — any six pastries for $13.
I went home with a carton filled with not just an impeccable pastel de nata egg tart, but also five other exceptional treats including an almond tart, a custard-filled bola de Berlim (Portugal’s take on a Berliner stuffed doughnut) a coconut-crusted pão de deus bun, a croissant filled with custard and a cannoli. They should last me, well, not as long as I thought I could hold out.
Lusa Bakery opened summer on Wellington Street West. It’s an offshoot of Boulangerie Lusa in Gatineau’s Hull sector, which opened in 1988 and which my sweet tooth really should have known about sooner.
While Lusa Bakery was on my radar in 2020, this pandemic shut-in only hustled on over this year after watching an episode of the Netflix show Somebody Feed Phil, in which globetrotting food-lover Phil Rosenthal’s trip to Lisbon took him to a bakery. I decided then that somebody should feed Peter some of those pastries.
The pastry showcase at Lusa teems with temptations such that picking just six of them won’t be easy. But here’s a tip that could cut back your sugar intake: the savoury items I’ve had from Lusa have been equally satisfying.
The most substantial of those meatier choices was a bifana sandwich that tucked morsels of spicily sauced pork tenderloin inside the lightest, freshest bun I can recall eating. Croquettes of salt cod, chicken and shrimp were also outstanding.
There are two tables of two at Lusa Bakery if you are able to linger with your food and a coffee. But variant jitters made me more keen to enjoy my Portuguese delicacies at home.
Those repeated discoveries at Lusa made me wonder what other Ottawa bakeries previously unknown to me might yield. Entirely on spec, I popped by Fiesta Manila Bakery, a Filipino business on Bank Street near Walkley Road, and later, Caribbean Sweets and Treats in Vanier.
Fiesta Manila Bakery, which opened six years ago, is a small, crowded store with its bakery in the back. I was told there had been a dine-in element to the business, but the pandemic put that on hold and enlarged the grocery store.
The bakery’s biggest boast, visible on its sign out front, is that it sells pandesal, which are airy, slightly sweet Filipino bread rolls the bakery makes and even sells to Filipino and Asian grocery stores in Montreal. The internet tells me pandesal rolls are typically eaten at breakfast, with coffee, and can be used to make sandwiches with sweet or savoury fillings. I can tell you they can be eaten entirely on their own, hot from their paper bag, and they are very fine.
From Fiesta Manila, I also had high-quality savoury pork buns reminiscent of the dim sum staple char siu bao, only much bigger, and made with meaty fillings that also included hard-boiled egg. I also left Fiesta Manila with a pack of the bakery’s spring rolls, also known as lumpia Shanghai, made with veggies and ground pork, and I wound up happily popping one of them in my mouth at each red light on the way home.
Caribbean Sweets is a 12-year-old business run by Haitian expat and baker Fredly Moussignac. Among its wares are tasty puff-pastry-like Haitian patties filled with beef, chicken or cod. From Caribbean Sweets, I also bought a bag of crackers, known as biscuits secs in Haiti, some brittle-like cashew and peanut clusters for dessert, and a plastic cup of fridge-chilled akasan, a thick beverage that Moussignac makes in house from dried corn, milk, coconut milk, cinnamon, nutmeg and more.
My visits to Fiesta Manila and Caribbean Sweets and Treats left me thinking that more explorations of Ottawa’s lesser known bakeries are in order. Poking around on Facebook, I see that La Bakery, which opened last fall, sells Mexican dessert items such as tres leches cupcakes, while Made In Brazil Bakery, which opened last summer, serves sweet guava buns and naturally fermented breads. Even if Ottawa is locked down, we can find ways to investigate the wide world of baking.