Review: At Dulce Hogar Bakery, Colombian classics and caramel-cheese doughnuts
Tiny North Tonawanda outfit brings sweet and savory South American delights to Oliver Street
Tipsters get fed.
That’s been my policy for the last decade as a restaurant critic.
When a reader alerts me to a place I decide to visit, I do my level best to meet them there, and buy them dinner.
To thank them for helping me do my job, first of all. Without a steady stream of intelligence from readers, my report would be narrower and shallower.
Getting an introduction to the restaurant’s standout dishes and fine points from a person already familiar with the situation helps identify its glories. Listening to someone explain their love for the restaurant helps me weigh its appeal to eaters besides myself.
At restaurants that could merit a review, I buy an absurd amount of food, typically covering a table or two with dishes. I need to photograph its wares, as well as taste them. So who’s going to eat all this? Tipsters and their companions.
Without “tipsters get fed,” who knows how long it would’ve taken me to get to Dulce Hogar Bakery, the month-old Colombian restaurant and bakery in North Tonawanda.
Claudia Jaramillo Lee, born in New York City to Colombian parents, dimed them out to me. We arranged a meeting, which I put in the wrong day in my calendar. So we rescheduled, and arrived on Oliver Street to meet Lee and her son Christian.
I brought three more eaters. Then we ordered every dish that Esneda Castillo and her husband Gustavo Pineda had to offer. It’s not the first Colombian restaurant in town, but Dulce Hogar (“Sweet Home”) Bakery’s pasty array makes its menu broader than Sabores De Mi Tierra, 247 Niagara St.
Lee’s translation skills helped me tell Dulce Hogar Bakery’s origin story. Born in Cali, Colombia amid nine siblings, Castillo has been a professional cook for 23 years, including Colombian and Ecuadorian bakeries and restaurants. After coming to the US in 2015, she’s cooked at La Tolteca, El Palenque, Agave, Maizal, and Señor Tequila.
She could have kept working for other people. But she and husband Gustavo Pineda started their own restaurant in part to provide appropriate work for their 23-year-old son Julian, who is blind. He works as a dishwasher.
Before diving into the menu, a service announcement.
Do not darken Dulce Hogar Bakery’s door if you cannot abide waiting. Order ahead for takeout. If you choose to enjoy its restaurant dishes in-house at its single long table, know Castillo is cooking as fast as she can.
This is a two-person operation that has barely a month in motion. If you’re in a hurry, hit a drive-through.
That said, the reasons to wait for dinner at 448 Oliver St. are manifold.
Empanadas, with seasoned shredded chicken filling ($2.99 each), come in chewy corn shells, unlike the crunchy flour jackets of Puerto Rican pastellilos.
Arepas at Dulce Hogar Bakery are made from corn ground in-house, for maximum flavor. They arrive with cheese ($7.50) or straight-up ($6.95), or as a side with platters.
Bunuelos ($3) are cornflour puffs the size of a fat plum. Deep-fried but not greasy, they’re another reminder what part of the world gave us corn.
Batidos ($6.95), are fruit milkshakes in a rainbow of tropical flavors, like lulo, which tastes like lime crossed with rhubarb. Mango, guava, passionfruit, and borojo, a tamarind-ish rainforest fruit.
Soups offered at Dulce Hogar include sopa queso ($12.99), with broth fortified with mild cheese. Sopa mariscos ($17.99) is chockablock with seafood - scallops, mussels, surimi, and a fish steak.
Or perhaps you like your fish fried ($18.99). No batter here - just a toss in flour, and into the fryer. When it’s ready, it emerges surrounded by complements - lime wedges, plantains, avocado, rice, and yuca - cassava tuber, not the desert plant.
Arroz con pollo ($17.99) arrives with shredded chicken in savory rice, with sausage, green olives, onions, and tomatoes.
In Peru, Chinese cooks spinning local ingredients led to the genius Chinese-Peruvian dish lomo saltado. Another South American Chinese standout is chaulafan ($24.99), a fried rice style that started in Ecuador.
Bandeja paisa ($26.99) is one of the world’s great meat dishes, and Colombia’s official national dish.
Bandeja paisa is a platter of protein pitched as a meal for one, but you might want help sinking this carne armada. Colombian sausage, morcilla blood sausage, steak, two fried eggs, plantains, rice, beans, an arepa corn cake, fresh-chopped salsa, kicky guacamole, and a foot-long strap of pork belly, roasted and fried to a shattering crisp.
As a pork belly enthusiast, this version was surreal - more like fried chicken in the eating, as most of the fat layers had been rendered out. Instant qualifier for my pork belly pantheon, right up there with bacon.
If that’s not enough meat, order up the picada for two ($30.99). The chicken breast was amiably moist, unlike versions cooked to leather.
Bakery delights range from $2-$5. Frycakes stuffed with caramel and a chunk of cheese are my favorite. Fifteen seconds in the microwave, and its warm, gooey heart made me a fan.
Wreath-shaped guava-laced sweet rolls ($5.75) are another offering I gave a microwave resuscitation to before it made sweet music with my black coffee. The pastry case needs more of my attention when I return.
In one night, under expert guidance, I added numerous world-renowned dishes and rainforest fruits to my life book. I’ll return to see what more they can teach me. In the meantime, come taste what these Colombians have offered our community.
Then you too can say: And to think I saw it on Oliver Street.
Dulce Hogar Bakery
448 Oliver St., 716-525-1010
Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Closed Monday.
Prices: baked goods $1-$8, fruit shakes $6.95, appetizers $2.50-$12, entrees $17.99-$26.99
Parking: street
Wheelchair accessible: no, one step
Gluten-free: arepas, empanadas, bunuelos, fish and meat dishes
Vegan: arepas, rice and beans, fruit shakes without milk
#30#
Excited to see that new restaurant open, moreso than the expensive places on Webster because our ability to enjoy Webster Street conflicts with Riviera Theatre crowds. Also fun to see a business next to that rail spur. I remember the days when the train crew would stop a short distance from there next to Galassi's so they could get lunch. The track goes at grade through backyards once daily on the way to Lockport, a great sight if you don't expect it because you will react to a full-sized train creeping though backyards.
Sounds incredible, thanks for this!!