Carlo's Bake Shop

Roy and I watch a show called "Cake Boss" which is a reality TV show about a family owned bakery in Hoboken, New Jersey. They focus a lot on decorating cakes but they also sell pastries, biscuits and plenty of other tasty goodies. Since Hoboken is a short trip over the North River we were keen to check out the bakery for ourselves. We took the 'path' train that leaves from the financial center and pretty soon, we were walking the streets of New Jersey. It was quite different from Manhattan. The streets were a little bit wider and open and very, very clean. We arrived at the bakery and I got pretty excited. There was a line out the front of it but it didn't look very big. We joined the end and waited patiently.

Even though the line didn't seem so big, it took a long time for us to move anywhere. Every ten or fifteen minutes or so a not-so-happy looking guy came out - in between long facebook sessions on his smart phone and called a couple of people up from the front of the line, gave them a number and ushered them inside. After about forty minutes of waiting outside (luckily the weather was really nice that day), the guy motioned for us to come over and join the crowd inside of the bakery.

It was time for some more waiting. Roy and I spent that time umming and aahhhing about what we were going to purchase. We decided to not eat a normal lunch and instead save room for lots of nice cakes and pastries. Our hotel room didn't have a fridge so unfortunately we couldn't buy a bunch of things to keep for the following days. So whatever we bought, we had to eat straight away (what a shame...). We spied two of the sisters from the show which was pretty cool. It made the crowd happy since there was so much waiting to be done. Only one of them was brave enough to come out and say hello.

An annoying thing about the bakery is that nothing is labelled so you either had to know about bakery goods or you needed to watch the show. I already had a good idea of what I wanted to try so we were set. They also didn't have prices on the items so you kind of had to blindly order and then pay whatever at the end and hope that it wasn't too expensive. Our number was called, I stuck my hand up and the lady came to take my order. "I would like two small cannoli's, two lobster tails and two red velvet cupcakes please".

A short time later she called us over to the cash register and to our delight, all of that food was about eleven dollars. I was rather excited. We had a bag full of goodies and we could finally get out of the crowded shop and go and sample them. We wandered to the shore, found a lovely park next to the river which overlooked Manhattan and sat down to have a feast. I noticed that there were already some red crumbs on the steps we were sitting on. It appeared that somebody already had sampled some red velvet cupcakes in that very spot. I think that Carlo's Bake Shop has put Hoboken on the map!

Lobster tail pastry - also known as Sfogliatelle (Italian) 

"Ohhh my gawwwd" (said with a mouthful of cream and crunchy pastry)

Red velvet with cream cheese icing.

It was all so delicious! I think my favourite was the lobster tail! So, so tasty! Even though it was a long wait, it was so worth it. I guess it's a good thing that Carlo's Bake Shop is so far away and such a long wait otherwise I would be one fat lady.