Pastry Me

Tizi and I are sitting in Cesari in Rimini on a Sunday afternoon. In front of us, on a little white plate, are six pastries, three for her, three for me. 

These are bigne, cream puffs you can eat in two bites, one of them filled with coffee-flavored crema, one with chocolate-flavored crema, one with crema-flavored crema. They’re light, so light that if you tossed one in the air and caught it in your mouth, you imagine it would come softly floating down, defying the laws of gravity. Lunch is a few hours behind us, so these pastries are dessert. Or rather, part dessert, part merenda, the late afternoon snack that Italians enjoy and that gets them to the dinner hour.   

Cesari is a pasticceria. They make pastries and cakes. No bread at Cesari. You buy bread at a “forno,” an establishment with an oven. At a forno you might also find cookies and sweets; at a pasticceria it’s unlikely you’ll find bread. The pasticceria is a fine institution in all of Italy.  Every town wants one. Most towns have one. Some have many. Rimini is such a town. Many. If you’re American, you might not think of having a pastry in the mid-to-late afternoon. If you’re in Italy, you most definitely should. 

While we sit, four ladies come in. They gaze at the counter, they order and eat, chatting for ten minutes while they do, then away they go. A man comes in and buys a few dozen, which are arranged on a cardboard platter, wrapped, and tied with a gold ribbon. Away he goes, probably to a dinner somewhere.  A few minutes later, a family of three–the boy might be nine. They order a few, sit at a table, and eat. These are locals. It’s likely they travel by foot. Cesari is their local place. It’s an outing.

Up the street from us in Serravalle is La Baguette. The original shop was a stand; no seating. Mostly baked bread. Hence the name. When they moved to their present location, 100 yards down the road, suddenly there were pastries. Then more pastries. (And local seasonal delicacies, such as piada dei morti.) Then more pastries. 

The pastries are delicious and beautiful, and they’re fresh every day. If you have restraint, you can treat yourself often. If you don’t have restraint, you’ll probably still be okay. Even the heavy numbers, like the zeppole, a fried donut with crema inside, topped with a cherry, if you can eat just one, you’ll be full, you’ll be happy, and you’ll be sort of okay.  

What’s the deal? Why are these pastries so good? The pastry chef at a shop called Goloso (the Italian word for glutton) says, “Italian pastries are often less sweet than other pastry varieties from the continent, and they tend to feature all fresh ingredients.” Adding, “They will be far less sweet than many over-processed pastries found across the pond as they won’t contain any nasties, such as high fructose corn syrup.”

If you see a pasticceria, don’t think about it. Just do it. Do it once and you’ll be hooked.