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.