Reviews Panaderia Latina Bakery

Que agradable poder disfrutar de una buena empanada de horno con pino fuera de Chile, absolutamente recomendable, las de queso en masa de hoja tambien son una delicia!

Although this bakery has been featured on the show You Gotta Eat Here, it doesn't seem to have garnered the same level of attention and popularity as other places in Vancouver. This is a shame really because the bakery's FREAKING FANTASTIC! As their name indicates, they are specialized in Latin American-style desserts, and features delicious dulce de leche in a lot of their goods. I've sampled their Milhoja, Torta de Dulce de Leche and Torta de Hojaldra (see below for more details). Everything was delicious (my favourite was the Torta de Dule de Leche, which is a cake filled with cream and delicious dulce de leche), and the prices are a great bargain.

Milhoja ($3.95):
3.5/5
The consisted of puff pastry with a generous layer of dulce de leche sandwiched in between. It was quite sticky and a bit messy to eat (I ended up getting caramel and pastry bits all over my fingers and lap). The pastry was a tad tough at times, and seemed to have a slightly "off" flavour. The dulce de leche on the other hand was delicious; thick, sticky and sweet.

Torta de Dulce de Leche ($4.75):
5/5
This consisted of layers of what I think is vanilla cream/mousse and dulce de leche sandwiched between cake and covered in coconut. And it was as fantastic as it sounded: the cake was soft and tender, and perfectly complemented by the cream and caramel, which lent both moisture and sweetness. The dulce de leche in this cake seems to be a bit different from that in the milhoja: it was runnier (but equally delicious). The coconut added a great fragance.

Torta de Hojaldra ($4.75):
4.5/5
Layers of puff pastry with tons of dulce de leche in between. This was like the Milhoja on steroids! While I did still find the puff pastry to be a bit lacking (I think that it might be a tad underbaked), because the layers were considerably thinner than the Milhoja, I wasn't nearly as bothered. Of course, I cannot get enough of the delicious, thick dulce de leche. I can imagine some people finding this dessert to be too sweet; for me however, it was fantastic.

I love this bakery; it's currently one of my favourite places in Vancouver for desserts. If you like dulce de leche, please do yourself a favour and head over there now; you will not be disappointed.

when i passed by this place i've never knew this place gets a high rating because it doesn't look like one. the place is like a minimart that sells lots of other country's packaged goods and also bakery. this time that i know this place have a good rating, i've decided to give it a try, and well inside there are many variation of food, bakery goods, and some hot food items as well like sandwhich, well i got the flan, tripple cheesecake, and a sandwhich can't remember which one it's atm. but i do enjoy the flan more as it's soft, sort of in the middle texture of jelly and cake, and the taste of sweetness is just right, the sandwhich, it's not really recommended, as it's not really flavourful to me, but it's well made i must say, it's something that you can eat 1000 times and not get bored of, the hint of spices and flavours is in the burger but it's not overwhelming. and this is the first time i tried a burger that have stringbeans type of vegetable is accompanied with the meat, definitely okay but i find it there's not much crunch with boiled stringbeans. i find the food that i bought it's just alright, but i must say the empanadas is definitely alright.

Authentic. This is where you want to go for authentic empanadas. Forget the house of empanadas! Good prices too

Hispanic equivalent to Aussie meat pie. Panaderia Latina is a cheery bit of Hispanic culture among the Asianity of the East Van/Burnaby boundary, with Spanish grocery products on the shelves, lots of intriguing Latin desserts and Spanish-language channels playing on the TV. Great place if you like that vibe.

I had never thought about it this way before eating an empanada from Panaderia Latina Bakery, but this is the Spanish take on the Cornish pasty, the British meat pie, the Aussie "rat coffin." (Gotta love those Australians, with their cheeky derogatory nicknames for common food items, like "snot blocks" for vanilla custard pastry slices...) They're all stew in a pie crust. Different types of stews and spicing, various proportions of vegetables to protein, an assortment of shapes, but the stew-in-crust dynamic crosses cultural gulches.

Panaderia Latina's empanadas are triangles that are bigger than my open palm, for under $4. They come across as a bit dough-heavy at the folded-over parts on the corners, but the crust isn't too tough. On the other hand, it's not filo or French patisserie, either. I stink at hand-making pie crusts, though, so anything that's better than mine, I won't knock. The filling on my beef empanada struck me as a trifle skimpy, less than 50% of the weight of the whole creation. I found the flavour a bit bland, with the heaviest taste presence from the onions and a lone pitted black olive. But that's just me -- I like Tex-Mex in-your-face spicing, and this is more South American-style subtle.

I bought a dulce de leche empanada that I had with my coffee the next day. Gently reheated in the toaster oven, the pastry had a texture between sugar cookie and pie crust -- crumbly, soft, not too dry. The caramel filling was almost an afterthought, hidden in the back, occupying maybe 20% of the pastry's space. There was so much of this empanada that I almost made another cappucino. It was good, though. For less than $3, I reckon it's a better value for the money than other sweet fads like the $3.50 doughnuts at Lucky's on Main.