Let Them Eat Cake--La Pastelería Ideal

The following is an excerpt from the latest edition of 'Mexico City: and Opinionated Guide for the Curious Traveler', available on Amazon (click HERE) or, in Mexico City, at Under the Volcano Books in Colonia Roma (click HERE).

The aroma gets you about fifty feet from the door, a warm

mixture of sugar and butter combining with the exhaust

fumes from nearby Eje Central. As you pass through the

doors of La Pastelería Ideal you enter a life-size version of

Candyland. Thousands of sugary cakes, muffins, tarts, strudels,

danish, biscuits, croissants, éclairs, cream puffs, donuts,

cupcakes and brioche are spread out before you; more than

300 varieties. And that’s not including the cookies (I counted

almost 70 different kinds).

A beloved institution known to generations of Mexicans, it

was founded by Spanish immigrant Don Adolfo Fernández

Cetina in 1927. He came to Mexico City in 1913 at the age of

17 to work with a cousin in his small bakery business. Today

there are three locations in the city with more than 250

employees. The ovens are going 24 hours a day, seven days

a week.

Need a cake to feed 1600? No problem. You could bake it at

home (all you need is 100 kilos of flour, 400 eggs, 40 kilos

of butter, and a 10-foot ladder to reach the top), or head

upstairs to Ideal’s  second floor cake showroom. You’ll

see hundreds of cakes of all sizes, shapes and colors—the

biggest, with nine layers, requires three workers to construct.

Decorations might include a plastic lucha libre doll,

ice cream cones, or even a tiny ballerina twirling above a

bubbling fountain with twinkling lights.

There are cakes for weddings, quinceañeras (a girl’s 15th

birthday), birthdays, baptisms, and graduations. Ideal has

provided cakes for TV and movie stars as well as for four

Mexican presidents.

Are the cakes on display real? Furtive finger marks in the

frosting certainly suggested they might be. It turns out the

frosting is real—egg whites and sugar—but the cake itself

is Styrofoam. “They last for years, but they’ll get dirty, so we

replace them every month or so,” an employee told me.

How to shop in a Mexican bakery:

Pick up one of the metal trays and a pair of tongs and help

yourself. At Ideal, go to the counter in the back of the store where you will be given a ticket with the price written on it. Pay at the caja, then go back to the counter where your wrapped pastries await you.  

               Pasteleria Ideal, Calle 16 de Septiembre 18,

                        is open from 6 am to 10 pm daily.