Aristos Greek Bakery

Bakery: Aristos Greek Bakery
Address: 633 King St E, Hamilton ON
Website: n/a
Style: Greek
Price: $$

The Greek Corner Store is a small-ish store that I always thought was some sort of convenience store. Well, convenience store it is not. Part-Greek deli, part bakery, these guys are apparently the only Greek bakery west of Toronto (well, in this part of the province at any rate).

Anyways, so I got a chance to get my hands on quite a selection of goodies, all, of course, slathered and positively dripping in honey, but really, was else could you expect? Their selection isn't huge, but they have all the staples: baklava, various phyllo pastries stuffed with nuts, bougatsa and some more standard cookies. Nothing is priced and, as such, all I knows is that a box of five items (four pictured, one eaten) cost $9.50.

First up on the list: a slice of bougatsa: custard pie. This is phyllo dough (plenty of honey) with this gigantic layer of custard right in the middle. Usually it's very pudding/custard-like, but it was almost overwhelmingly eggy, with the giant amount of filling most resembling scrambled eggs.. which was not very tasty, in my opinion.

Much better were the nutty treats, starting with the kataifi roll, which is pretty much a baklava filling of nuts and spices wrapped in angel hair pasta-like dough. This when then dunked in syrup, of course.

My personal favourite was what I sort of ended up calling the "spring roll": that same filling of nuts and cinnamon wrapped in a hard, flaky dough. Yes, I suppose I'm not the best at describing it, but it was good: good crunch, not soggy, and more than well spiced. Yum! :P

Last but not least was the traditional baklava with fluffy, honeyed dough and stuffed with what seemed like not enough nuts. Similar to the others, it was good, but not the greatest.

Rating: ***