Rosa Porto’s pineapple Cuban cake is being reintroduced after having been taken off the menu just before the pandemic and brought back in honor of her 90th birthday last year.

They are designed to take on the personality of the community and neighborhood where they operate. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) Porto’s Bakery & Café plans to have a grand opening of its Northridge location on April 12. Pastries at the new Porto’s Bakery & Cafe at the site of the old Sears auto center at the Northridge mall Friday, April 8, 2022. Last year, it started offering a limited number of its products at the Northridge Fashion Center farmers market Wednesday evenings that turned out to be a big hit, although the family plans to phase out of that endeavor.īut now after months of construction and personnel training, the 17,000-square-foot Porto’s with a comfortable, modern-mix decor is ready for business with all their old favorites including the popular potato balls.

It also beefed up its ‘Bake at Home,’ taking holiday orders on select frozen pastries shipped nationwide. Operations pivoted from dine-in only to online orders for in-car pickup for the first time in its 46-year history. Margarita Navarro, left, and Betty Porto, co-owners of the new Porto’s Bakery & Cafe at the site of the old Sears auto center at the Northridge mall Friday, April 8, 2022. Gavin Newsom’s call to shut down dine-in establishments to slow the spread of the coronavirus in March, 2020, the popular family-run Cuban bakery and café, famous for its meat pies, Refugiado guava and cheese pastries, cheese rolls and guava strudel, changed its business model. The project was to be set back on its heels several times due to changes in the ownership of the fashion center, city bureaucratic red tape, material and merchandise delays and COVID-19.īut Porto’s business operations weathered the storm. The multi-million-dollar renovation of the old Sears Auto Center has been in the works since August 2019. “I was fortunate to work elsewhere to get the experience from the outside and bring it in,” the younger Porto said. He was part of getting the Northridge location up off the ground. The 30-year-old earned his business degree at CSUN went to a top-notch culinary school in Rhode Island, came back to Los Angeles and worked in other restaurants before coming on board at Porto’s. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)Īnd now a third generation is getting into the act at the latest location.Īdrian Porto, Rosa’s grandson, is the back-of-the-house manager. “They use all good ingredients.” Employees are trained behind the counter at the new Porto’s Bakery & Cafe at the site of the old Sears auto center at the Northridge mall Friday, April 8, 2022. “We are very happy and thrilled to know the Porto family still has that pride in their mother’s work,” the octogenarian said. Northridge was the third Porto’s opening Figueras has attended. “Her apartment was so clean and the cakes so beautifully done,” Figueras said on Friday in Spanish through her son, Manny Figueras. She went to her two-bedroom apartment in the Silver Lake area where Porto baked her cakes and cooled them on sheets on top of beds.įigueras’ first taste was the pineapple Cuban cake. Northridge is the third largest of the six locations.Īnna Figueras, 89, remembers hearing about Porto’s cakes from a friend early on and decided to seek her out. Since then, the business has flourished at sites in Glendale, Burbank, Buena Park, Downey and West Covina. Several years later, having outgrown her home-based operation, she opened a shop a few blocks away where her pastries turned generations after generations became loyal guests and Porto’s Bakery & Café into a family tradition. Instead, she began baking cakes nonstop out of her family’s home every Thursday through Sunday.

Once in Los Angeles, Rosa attempted to find work in local bakeries, but as a woman in the 1970s she struck out.

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