Cafe Aroma Latino

Bakery: Cafe Aroma Latino
Address: 5780 North St, Halifax NS
Website: n/a
Style: Mexican, South American 
Price: $

This is my final "Great Canadian" Cake Tour of the year; well, this is the last stop on my trip to the Maritimes a couple months ago and it's taken me this long to finish things up. Nevertheless, Cafe Aroma Latino, though I had wanted to try it and someone I know recommended it as a budget-friendly, tasty place for food, was actually my plan B. I had yet again tried the local market a couple doors down and found nothing -- this time, they did have a tray, with corresponding prices, but everything was gone! -.- So, off to Cafe Aroma Latino I went!

Cafe Aroma Latino specializes in, as the name suggests, pan-South and Central American foods, both savoury and sweet. It features a hodgepodge of small, well-priced dishes with a description and country of origin written beside each item. The selection isn't huge, but it's interesting with its choice of cheese stuffed items (such as arepas done more than one way) and, of course, there are several (rum-soaked) cake slices (at around $2.50 each) to choose from. That's what I'm talking about! ;) Unfortunately, it seems to be just my luck that the aforementioned cake was unavailable that day (as was another similar one) and, stating that I wanted to save this for my train trip the following day, the worker recommended I grab a sweet empanada instead. (around $1)

Sweet empanadas, por favor! :P

Well, no rum cake for me. :( But I take up the advice and got, among other savoury items, a sweet empanada. Normally, one would associate empanadas with meat fillings, but there are countless sweet variations. The shell was similar, if not identical, to the savoury kind, though perhaps slightly on the sweeter side. The filling was pretty interesting and, in fact, not exactly what I was expecting, though I'm not sure what I *was* expecting... It was a flavour-packed, delicately spiced fruit paste filling, though I have a hard time pinpointing the actual fruit used. I want to say fig because of the small seeds and dark pulp, but I don't think it was fig. It has so boggled me, I even did research and can't come up with a definitive answer; authentic sweet empanadas are stuffed with anything from pear, pumpkin, rice, to a variety of tropical fruits I've never heard of. To be quite honest with you, I liked the Colombian arepa (cassava patties stuffed with cheese) the most of the items I got, but the empanada was, nonetheless, a tasty and unique treat.

Rating: **1/2