Mandala Bakery and Convenience

Bakery: Mandala Bakery and Convenience 
Address: 1506 Queen St W, Toronto, ON
Website: n/a 
Style: Tibetan, Indian 
Price: $$ 

Now, if anyone has been following my posts, they'll know I have a particular soft spot for more obscure, hard-to-find ethnic bakeries. I do love exploring the world through baked goods, and so imagine my absolute delight to find a newer Tibetan deli advertising themselves as a bakery in what is known as Little Tibet, a small pocket within Parkdale, in west Toronto. I'm in the neighbourhood once a month for my Tibetan fix and I must have walked past this a few times before actually noticing it.

 Inside, Mandala is indeed more a convenience store/deli/mini-grocery store than an actual bakery and even then, this probably more refers to their selection of savoury items like pakora, samosa, patties (sadly not the Tibetan kind) than their case full of Indian-style sweets right next to the cash. These are sold at a set price of $1.49/100g and are simply labelled by their names; for those familiar with Indian sweets, they'll recognize many of them: gulab, carrot cake, burfi, etc.

While sweets aren't perhaps my favourite treat, I just had to give these a try. With the help of the man behind the counter, I grabbed a total of six items ($4.30 with tax).

These were, in order from favourite to least favourite: the moist orange-coloured, carrot-based sponge cake ball - the only one I forgot the name of - soaked in sugar syrup; dense khoya milk cake with one part cream and a sort of crumble; the classic and without a doubt the most well known gulab jamun, moist and spongy with sugar syrup; fudge-like barfi in regular and chocolate versions (personally preferred regular); and another dense, fudge-like ball-shaped one known as pera (this being the white version), which rounded out the set.

I did like the spongy, sugary ones the most, though I liked the different textures in the milk cake; those ones resembling fudge... not super fond of, but that was a matter of personal preference more than anything else. And while I may not be substituting my sha balay and bodh ja with sweets anytime soon, what a surprising find!

Rating: ***