Boston, MA (The Joy of Food) — Mike’s Pastry may not be on your radar until you spot 10,000 branded Mike’s Pastry boxes being carried around the greater Boston area. These folks have got their marketing down to a T.
I have never seen so many cannoli flavors in my life. I have never seen cannoli so giant in my life. I have never seen human arms turbo wrap a string around a box so quickly in my life. I wish I had this on video.
You’ll know you’re at the right place when you spot a zoo of about a million people haphazardly lined up under harsh fluorescent lights all vying for a chance to order like it’s the Hunger Games. Once you make eye contact with a worker at the front you’d best order quickly and swiftly before a hungry savage behind you pushes their way forward and you lose your turn. Apparently, it’s all part of the Mike’s Pastry experience.
The menu is vast if not overwhelming and yet it’s hard to come away impressed by anything. There are a few dozen cannoli options, some of which get dipped and finished off in ungodly things — stuff like peanut butter and Oreo cookies.
The pistachio cannolo is mediocre at best, reliant on overly sweet filling for most of its flavor. There’s something weirdly whipped about the cream which, aside from the saccharine taste, sits in a dense exterior that’s moistened and has already lost its flake.
A cannolo shell should be thin, light, and flaky, just formidable enough to hold the silky filling. Shells and filling should be kept separate until an order is placed, ensuring a crunchy outside and a cold, smooth inside in every bite. If a shell is sturdy enough to stand up to cannoli cream for hours on end, it is probably inedible.
Cannoli are without a doubt Sicily’s most famous contribution to the world of pastry, crisp-fried tubular shells that should crunch and shatter just a little — not completely — when you bite into them, with a filling of ricotta cream.
Yes, lest anyone forget, the primary flavor in this classic dessert should be cheese, a composite experience that’s rich yet refined and never sweet enough to send you into hyperglycemic shock. Bakeries in the U.S.A. use runny cow’s milk ricotta and add powdered sugar or cornstarch to thicken it up, at which point you might as well use spackle. All of these are crimes against cannoli in my book.
In Italy, fresh sheep’s milk ricotta gets leveraged, denser with a bit of tang and it balances well with the added sugar. You can stir in mini chocolate chips or chopped candied orange peel, though I prefer when they’re used as garnishes.
All the people that rave about how these are the bestest cannoli in the universe have yet to experience the delight and taste of real Italian cannoli. These are sugar, pure and simple, and far from the best dessert you’ll find. In Boston alone, Modern Pastry serves a better product without the feeding frenzy atmosphere.
Written by Joy
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I was going to suggest Maria’s Bakery, but apparently they’ve closed for good. That’s sad.
Reading about pastries makes me want to go on a trip to Boston or New Orleans.
Now-defunct Maria’s was definitely better but still pre-filled. I can’t think of anyone in the U.S. who keeps the cannoli shells unfilled until the point of sale, a concept I don’t understand since it would come off more artisanal (which is what everybody and their brother is aiming for these days) and, more importantly, it keeps the outer shell nice and crisp. With the proper pastry bag it takes two seconds to fill one of these puppies.
At least you’ve got a few decent desserts near you – the kouign-amann at Mañana comes to mind. But beignets in New Orleans, touristy though they may be, are quite good as well.
I know one place. I was literally wandering around Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, not knowing what to do (the bookstore I’d visited was a lot smaller than I’d expected), when I saw a hand-drawn sign that said:
Cannoli’s
Order
made while you
wait……
{ Ricotta Cheese
Italian Pastry}
I walked in, there were a couple of people sitting at a table gabbing, and I went to the counter; one of the guys got up and walked around to the other side of the counter, took my order, and then yelled “Hey ma, someone wants a cannoli!”
So his mom went into the kitchen and made a cannoli. This was a place called “A Little Slice of Heaven”.
Oh, well. Apparently I knew one place. Looks like it’s closed, too.
I remember that now. I think that was the one where you took the picture after the cannolo had slid around your entire back seat. 😂
That was the place! Good cannolo.
That’s good you kept the savages at bay.
It’s sort of like being in any bar in Italy. Shove your way to the front with money in hand, then scream your order at them.
Years ago, friends were in Boston and went to Mike’s Pastry. Husband got caught up in the feeding frenzy of savages and bought a couple dozen cannolis. They hated them, and gave away the rest of the pastries to the folks at their hotel. When we were in Boston, we stopped at Mike’s while doing the Freedom Trail. The store was empty, but wisely, we only bought a couple of cannolis to try. The shell was too hard and the filling was like eating straight frosting. I guess a good cannoli is hard to find.
Yes that sounds about right! The Americanized cannolo has morphed to the point where it is not anything like the real deal, only catering to the idea that ‘bigger is better,’ giving a million options (i.e. ‘toppings’), and using sub-par ingredients to save on costs. I suppose the two concepts aren’t mutually exclusive and can co-exist peacefully like any foreign food with an Americanized equivalent, but this particular product is awful no matter how you slice it.