Bread and pastry galore at Porto's

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Mommy was watching a "Worth It" food video blog on Youtube by Steven Lim, Andrew Ilnyckyj, and Adam Bianchi... something about trying out cakes of different price points baked by various bakeries in SoCal. A few days later, I was in SoCal, attending Matthew's graduation. Mommy requested me to shop at Porto's, one of the bakeries featured in the video blog, for pasalubong. Biboy already had a ready list of pastries to buy and was just waiting for me to call him up. 

I didn't realise just how famous this bakery is until I saw a parking lot sign. It said, "Porto's customers have a two-hour limit in the parking lot", or something to that effect. The queue was that long???

Yes, the bakery was crowded when we arrived. There was a surprisingly long queue for food to-go! I noted that the café was not as filled as the take-out counter when we popped in... perhaps, people buying at the same we were there were more interested in buying pasalubong too! 

Anyway, while we joined the long, slow procession, we started listing out what to order. 


Ate Gigi had a few recommendations which were very useful because I was overwhelmed by the selection. There were so many pastries and variants to choose from! Imagine how standardised Porto's baking protocols are for what seems to be over a hundred pastries! They just dish out trays upon trays of cake slices, bread loaves, and cups of custards. The pastries just kept on coming!


I didn't realise just how much food I bought until I received my package of goodies. I actually filled two large shopping bags with boxes of pastries! I bought six eclairs, a dozen bolillo rolls, six potato balls, and four cheese breads for Mommy, Daddy, and Anna; Biboy's shopping list included six cheese breads, six guava cheese breads, six chicken croquets, and a Cubano sandwich.


With Kuya Merlin's SUV already filled with our luggage, it was quite a challenge to find space for the pastries and ample legroom! Although difficult, I found that it wasn't as big of a feat as hand-carrying two dozen J. Co. doughnuts from Manila to Pittsburg (with a layover in Honolulu) or transporting two dozen Ladurée macarons from Lausanne to Manila.

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