Valerio's Tropical Bakeshop

Bakery: Valerio's Tropical Bakeshop
Address: 800 Boyer Blvd, Mississauga ON 
Website: https://valeriostropicalbakeshop.com/
Style: Filipino 
Price: $$ 

Attached to Filipino supermarket Seafood City, Valerio's Tropical Bakeshop is actually a small American chain of Filipino bakeries located mostly in the southern US and Hawaii. Why, out of all the places, they chose to open a lone Canadian offshoot in Heartland Town Centre is a little weird, especially since an independent bakery could have done the trick. Nevertheless, I was once in the parking lot and poked my head inside and noticed that Valerio's just has pre-packed bulk baked goods in plastic bags. My first impression was that they didn't even make half the stuff. Whether they changed and increased production or I got the wrong idea from all those plastic bags filled with buns, Valerio's does indeed make their own baked goods and sell plenty of individual treats, both baked and fried, by the cash. These include all your Filipino staples like pandesal, taro (ube) bread, ensaymada, cheese bread along with bread, pastries and other uh, colourful stuff you may not find elsewhere. Individual treats are well priced, but some of the packaged stuff gets up there in terms of cost.

I tried a couple things: this what I presume to be a bibingka from website photos and the deep-fried banana (neither was labelled or priced at the time). The "cake" had a nice crust to it and I liked that, though I didn't know it was glutinous rice flour based, it wasn't as sticky or gummy as I was dreading. A hint of coconut. The sticky and sweet banana roll was good in taste, but soggy. The syrup I think would have been better thicker and less watery; that would have helped the dough retain that crispy outer layer it lacked.

 The highlight without a doubt were these fried balls (carioca; $3-something). I suppose they were similar in terms of ingredients to the bibingka with that squishy, chewy rice flour base with coconut, but the execution was so much more to my liking. Coated in sugar syrup, they had that slight crust on the outside and you couldn't quite place what they were. Maybe it's not worth the insanity that's usually surrounding this place, but if you're in the mood for something "tropical"....

Rating: **1/2