I'm Only Here for the Food!

Panaderia Latina Bakery
4906 Joyce Street
Vancouver, BC

Just as the subject might suggest… Here I go again, Latin American food! Panaderia Latina Bakery (which, if you know Spanish, will fall into the category of Redundancy Department of Redundancy) came to my attention after an article The Georgia Straight (check the full article here). Non-Mexican food? That was all I needed to know…

Located just north of Joyce-Collingwood Skytrain Station, I will have to admit this is a case of, if you don’t know it is there, it is highly unlikely you will run into it. Really, chances you will run into this place is almost nil, as it would be unlikely anybody would be driving here. But, when I was there, I noticed there was a mix of Spanish speaking people and your regular customers.

Being a bakery, you would expect their specialty be pastries, right? Well, they had its share. I saw some of the pastries I used to have in Panama, like oreja (literally, ears; sometimes known as elephant ears), budin (known in Panama as mamallena, bread pudding in English speaking countries), mil hojas (literally thousand leaves, also known as mille-feuille), merengue and so on. I was so tempted to get some but I don’t think I would have eaten that much. Instead, I went for something else.

In addition to selling pastries, they also sell some Latin American groceries.

What else do they sell? In addition to the groceries and pastries, and on the same vein as Italian delis, they have sandwiches. Now, Panama is not known for sandwiches (as diet is more of rice or maize based) but thanks to it being a melting pot, you will find gyro, cubano and so on. So, in a way, I was not sure what to expect from their sandwiches. Even asking for the description did not really help. In the end, I ordered a sandwich called Guatón (just under $10).

What a $10 sandwich?! Now, I will have to say that, when I inquired about it, I was advised it would be a large sandwich with tomato, green beans and meat (I was told carne, in Spanish, that would be a generic term for meat, though usually it refers to beef). This was not only big… It was loaded!

As mentioned above, it had your usual tomato, option for cheese (which I chose to skip), green beans, which I will have to admit was something odd but worked in the end, and thin slices of beef – think something similar to a beef dip. However, unlike a beef dip, where you would “dunk” the sandwich in the broth, here, the “liquid” from the beans, plus the beef’s own juices moisten the bread. And, while the bread was not grilled/toasted, it was soft and absorbed the juices very well. I will admit it was not really savoury; however, it had a good balance of flavours.

Wait, did I say it was big? By now, you should know that I am very really heavy eater, i.e., I can eat… A LOT (though not as much as I did a couple of years back). But, this one was heavy. To make it short, I could not finish it… However, no regrets.

I knew I needed to visit this place a second time and so I did by ordering another sandwich, this time a barros luco. Again, it was a steak sandwich but it had mozzarella cheese rather than the green beans. And, again, while the bread was not crusty (i.e., it was soft), it, again, absorbed the flavours from the rest of the ingredients.

On that same trip to buy the second sandwich, I grab something that will raise some eyebrows. What is this? Chicharrón, aka, pork rind! While it was not the best I have had, it did manage to satisfy that crave I did not know I had… ^_^;;;

Overall, this is a place I would like to be a frequent customer. Even when I did not have a pastry, just by the looks of it, I can dare to say it is certain it will taste good. After all, when expatriates come to you to satisfy their cravings, you ought to be doing something well, right? But, when others do the same, you have something good.