Mike’s Pastry

It was a hot day, we had been walking for hours, and we ended up in the North End of Boston in the middle of the afternoon when it was too late for lunch but not quite time for dinner.  Espresso or an iced coffee, a sweet snack, an air-conditioned café, and anywhere with seating was on both of our minds.  We stopped in a couple different coffee shops to find only a few people seated, prices that were high, and coffee glasses that were much smaller than we have pictured for our afternoon beverages.  After feeling slightly awkward leaving both of these places, we re-entered the streets of Boston’s North End to scope out the best place to grab a quick snack and a coffee.

As we made our way down Hanover Street, we saw a couple coming towards us with iced coffee drinks.  After getting over my sudden feeling of jealousy, I decided to nonchalantly take a look at their cups as they went by in hopes of finding out where these delectable beverages had come from.  There, written in blue lettering, was the words Mike’s Pastry.  Sure enough, a couple blocks farther down Hanover Street, I saw several people coming in and out of this little pastry shop.  (It is always a good sign when there is a crowd!)

We entered the shop and realized that it was not just crowded with tourists like us, taking a break from our history lesson on the Freedom Trail, but Italian grandmas buying breads and cookies left and right. There are only two things you must know about Italian grandmas in a pastry shop, they are loud and pushy!  Thankfully I have Italian blood myself, and I pushed my way through the crowd to the cannoli counter.  It was filled with different types of cannolis, but we decided to go with the traditional, just to see how it measured up to my family’s homemade ones we make every year at Christmas time.  We also had to work our way through a tough group of mamas at the coffee counter, but we soon had our iced lattes and found ourselves seated at a table in the front of the shop, cannoli in hand.

The iced coffee was just the thing we needed on the hot afternoon though it was not better than what you would get at Starbucks.  The true treasure of this pastry shop was the cannoli.  The shell was a perfect flakiness, sprinkled with powered sugar, and topped off with small dollops of frosting and chocolate chips.  The filling was creamy and had that flavor only a true Italian-made cannoli can have.  Let’s just say that sitting there, eating our cannoli, sipping out cool drinks, and watching people come and go was a little piece of heaven on that hot day.  Not to mention, it was a window into the world of the Italians of the North End.