Amico Chef

Bakery: Amico Chef
Address: 2889 Dufferin St, Toronto ON 
Website: http://amicochef.com/
Style: Italian 
Price: $$ 

Located off of Dufferin in an adjacent building, and thus a bit difficult to locate when driving past, Amico Chef is a relaxed Italian bakery that differentiates itself from most Italian bakeries in Toronto in that they're not a deli. They don't serve lasagna or have shelves of imported products or cold cuts with a small fridge off to the side with some pastries and treats. Here, the bakery takes centre stage. With its counter carrying on around the store and a display case -- as well as the amazing rum baba filler -- next to the cash, Amico Chef specializes in traditional Italian pastries (with a few very lovely-looking cakes) and rustic, almost foccacia-like pizza. It's a fresh, wholly welcome concept and, with just a few of each item and others made upon order, a fresh one, at that; you don't have to worry about how long those tiers upon tiers of cannoli have been sitting there.

 It being pumpkin season at the time, they had a seasonal special pumpkin ricotta filling available for the cannoli, bombe, and one more pastry. Being a fan of pumpkin, I had to try this modern take on the classic connolo. The latter are also in either regular or small sizes: the small is a little too small and the large a bit too big for one person... somewhat wish they had a medium or the large was smaller and cheaper. Nonetheless, the full-size cannolo was needed ($3.95). Even I didn't expect this pumpkin idea to work as well as it did: a crispy and bubbly shell stuffed with the delicately spiced, slightly tart filling that was then rolled in big chunks of nuts. The texture was perfect: thick and smooth, and the taste was so good that you could just at it on its own. A surprise hit.

I also tried a bomba with nutella filling ($1.95). This small, Italian-style doughnut didn't appeal to me the way the cannolo did. For one, I felt there was simply too much filling for the size of doughnut; I was also not such a fan of the dense, spongy dough, but this is more personal preference than anything wrong with the bakery. Still, next time, I'm loading up on those cannoli... and I do want to see that rum baba-nator in action!

Rating: ***