Fortuna Bakery

Bakery: Fortuna Bakery
Address: 4240 Hastings St, Burnaby, BC
Website: http://fortunabakery.com/
Style: Italian, Portuguese  
Price: $$$ 

Amid this former enclave of Italian businesses along E Hastings, there's the long-standing Fortuna Bakery. There are other bakeries, but I mostly picked this particular bakery based on the distinction that they're actually open on Sundays. ;) Hey, sometimes simple opening hours give you an edge....

Fortuna Bakery looks like an institution on the inside with its classic, no frills display cases, though it must have changed hands somewhere along the line as it's no longer Italian-, but Portuguese-run. As such, it didn't have as many Italian baked goods and treats as I'd been expecting. That being said, it's actually more a typically Canadian hodgepodge with anything from cinnamon buns and red velvet squares to cream puffs and those famous pasteis de nata. Only select items are priced.

In honour of Fortuna's decades' long history, I did go with the cannoli as one of the few items available that were distinctly Italian. Personally, I'm not the biggest cannolo fan, but I was intent on visiting an Italian bakery that day and I was going to follow through! As one of the items that are not priced, I was amazed that they were $3 each - what? these are the mini cannoli variety that I have never seen cost more than $2! Not to mention nothing else in the display case exceeded $2.50; come on, there's nothing that special about cannoli... I also didn't really appreciate that they were just thrown haphazardly together like I'd bought some sort of 2/$1 deal too.

To the tasting now: I liked the crisp, nicely fried tubes. Could have been thinner and bubblier, but the taste and texture was there. However, there are two components to any cannolo and the chocolate chip ricotta cream filling did not deliver; this was mainly due to the fact that it was so runny! It had this weird grit-like consistency and was weirdly grainy. The chocolate chunks were too big and obtrusive compared to the watery cream and the size of the pastries. I was happy to have hit one of Vancouver's old-school bakeries, but this was not worth it.

Rating: **1/2