Vida Doce

I am not going to lie. When I got out of my car and saw the facade of Vida Doce I was afraid that it was going to be some bullshit suburban coffee shop where an underachiever who still lives with mom and dad serves you a $5 scone that was made in Waukegan and shipped across the country wrapped in celephane.

Thank God, I was completely wrong.

Vida Doce is an outstanding little place just off the Berlin Turnpike in Newington. A friend of my wife highly recommended Vida Doce and since I was in the neighborhood yesterday, I thought I would check it out.

As you can see from the picture, Vida Doce doesn't look like anything special and the interior looks a bit like a really upscale Starbucks, but that pastry case you can see on the right is loaded full of magnificent confections and the sandwiches that come out of the kitchen are amazing.

The owner of Vida Doce is Matthew Seguro. If I didn't know he was a fellow Portuguese from his name (which I did), the Portuguese flag he has planted at the entrance to his parking lot would have given it away. That, and the outstanding Portuguese food and pastry he serves.

For lunch I opted for the Bifana ($6.99). Bifana is grilled, marinated pork loin and Vida Doce serves it up on a fresh Portuguese roll with carmelized onions and sauteed peppers. The pork was great. It was moist (which provided plenty of juice to soak into the roll :> x 5) and flavorful, but not over-marinated. I have probably had several hundred sandwiches like this in my life and this one was so good it almost made me teary-eyed thinking of all the great Portuguese food I had as a kid. Outstanding.

Far from the 'sigh' and half-ass service you get at a lot of cafes trying too hard to be chic the service at Vida Doce was friendly and prompt.

I can't go to a bakery, let alone a Portuguese bakery, without getting something, so I opted to get two slices of flan and a half-dozen natas (the last of which I am devouring now as I type) to bring home. It turned out to be about the best $12.50 I've spent in a long, long time. I am not a huge fan of flan, but since I was going old school/old country yesterday, I went all the way. It was amazing. The texture was perfect and it was tasty without being too sweet. My wife thought it was the best flan she had had in many years. It also had the added plus of being on a bed of chocolate cake, which was itself really, really good.

For the uninitiated, natas are a traditional Portuguese pastry that were invented in Lisbon about 300 years ago, but which now can be found pretty much anywhere in the world where Portuguese is spoken. They look like very small pies and consist of custard in a flaky pie crust. The top of the custard takes on a brownish color. They are very, very, very tasty little morsels and Vida Doce's stacked up perfectly well.

Vida Doce has a full range of pastries (including all the traditional Italian specialties) and about ten different very reasonably-priced sandwiches, ranging from bifana to eggplant and tuna fish. They also serve breakfast (both traditional Portuguese and American) until 11 AM and they make wedding cakes and other special-order cakes.

If you are on the Berlin Turnpike at lunchtime, don't go to Wendy's and waste your money and shorten your life. Go to Vida Doce and have a delicious sandwich and then some desert (OK, that might shorten your life too, but I'd rather die from eating delicious food and rich pastry than from eating crappy fast food loaded with salt and chemical preservatives). My wife tells me Vida Doce is fairly new so I am sure they would appreciate the patronage. I know I'll be going back - soon.

Here's a link to Vida Doce's website: http://www.vidadocepastryshop.com/website/Welcome.html