Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the corner location on Albemarle Street, in
the heart of Little Italy, is the one with a
bustling sit-down cafe, where you can
enjoy your rum cake or cannoli with a
frothy cappuccino—that is, after you've
waited in line to get a table.
After all these years, however, Vaccaro's
is getting serious competition from
Piedi-
grotta Bakery,
which opened in 2002 4
blocks east on Central Avenue. It's run by
Carminantonio Iannaccone, a Neapolitan
native who claims to having invented tira-
misu in Treviso in 1969. Whether or not
that's true—the origins of tiramisu are hotly
debated—Iannaccone certainly turns out
admirably flaky
sfogliatelle,
fluffy cream-
filled
profiteroles,
and sleek éclairs, as well
as fine cannoli and cookies, in this small,
unassuming shop. There's no room for
seats, but it's well worth a little walk to
sample Iannaccone's masterful pastries.
And with
two
great Italian bakeries, Balti-
more's Little Italy really scores.
Vaccaro's,
222 Albemarle St. (
&
410/
685-4905;
www.vaccaropastry.com).
Piedigrotta Bakery,
319 S. Central Ave.
(
&
410/522-6900;
www.piedigrotta
bakery.com).
(
Baltimore-Washington International
(10 miles/16km).
L
$$$
Baltimore Marriott Water-
front Hotel,
700 Aliceanna St., Inner Har-
bor East (
&
410/385-3000;
www.baltimore
marriottwaterfront.com). $$
Brookshire
Suites,
120 E. Lombard St. (
&
866/583-
4162
or 410/625-1300; www.harbormagic.
com).
The Baker's Best
481
Lucy's Sweet Surrender
When You're Hungry for Hungary
Cleveland, Ohio
Forty years ago, Cleveland had more Hun-
garian residents than Budapest—and those
transplanted Hungarians
needed
their stru-
del. Lucy's Sweet Surrender came to the
rescue, with feather-light strudels from a
gingerbread-trimmed shop on Buckeye
Road, in the thick of what was then the
Hungarian immigrants' neighborhood in
southeast Cleveland.
Times have changed. Lucy herself has
passed on, and the Buckeye Road area is a
victim of urban blight; Clevelanders are
more likely to buy their pastries at a Star-
bucks or the bakery counter of some
mega-supermarket over in upscale Shaker
Heights to the east. But at Lucy's—owned
now by Michael Feigenbaum, who grew
up eating Lucy's strudel—the strudel is
still being hand-pulled daily on wooden
tables in the back kitchen, layers of flaky
golden pastry dough folded around delec-
table fillings—apple, cherry, cheese, apri-
cot cheese, peach apricot, even Eastern
European variations like poppy seed and
cabbage strudel that are nearly impossible
to find anywhere else. Of course every-
thing's baked from scratch, even though
two bakers can only turn out 72 tradition-
ally handmade strudels a day—hardly
enough when holidays roll around and
Clevelanders suddenly get a hankering for
long-forgotten childhood treats. (Lucy's
does a big business in shipping strudel to
transplanted Clevelanders, too.)
There's more than strudel here—the
bakery has 150 items in its repertoire:
cakes, pies, dense traditional cookies, nut
rolls, poppy seed rolls, Danish breakfast
pastries, cinnamon rolls, sour cream pas-
tries, European-style tortes such as Dobos
