Downtown Baltimore has many notable features: one of the nation's prettiest waterfronts, Edgar Allan Poe's grave, the Baltimore Orioles' home at Camden Yards, an iconic view of the Domino Sugar factory, close proximity to one of my favorite museums ever (the always original, often bizarre American Visionary Art Museum), and Little Italy. Ranging from authentic to kitsch, Baltimore's Little Italy may be smaller than some, but the quality of one particular business puts other city's would-be competitors to shame: Vaccaro's Italian Pastry. Offering a wide range of pastries to choose from, you really can't go wrong--Want a Coconut Cream Napoleon? Dive right in!--but the main event are Vaccaro's cannoli.
There's nothing surprising about the cannoli other than how great they are. Like any respectable purveyor of Italian pastry, the cannoli are not filled with the ricotta cream until after the customer orders, keeping the shell crisp. They offer plain and chocolate-dipped shells filled with regular or chocolate cream. Once again, you can't lose, but the regular ricotta in a plain shell is work of art. The cream is thick and heavy, emphasizing the ricotta, unlike lesser businesses whose sickly sweet product uses far too much powdered sugar. Vaccaro's pastry is sweet, but in a more subtle Italian way. Their ricotta is dotted with chocolate chips and has aromatic spices that awakens the senses and gets the sweet tooth twitching. To look at it, the cannoli from Vaccaro's look similar to just about any other cannoli you'll come across, only they get every part of it right. No frills, no surprises. Just great pastry.
It's no wonder that, when I was eating at a nearby Italian restaurant and some nearby customers asked about the dessert options, the waiter started to tell them only to stop himself midway through to say, "You know what? Vaccaro's is right around the corner. That's the place to go." And I agree. If you're in Baltimore: Vaccaro's.
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