What: The cheese Danish
Where: Villa Bakery, 67470 Ramon Road, Cathedral City
How much: 80 cents
Contact: 760-322-5701
Why: It’s flaky, sweet, cheesy and generally delicious.
Sometimes, good things can result when bad things happen.
I was driving down Ramon Road recently when I saw that someone had kicked or punched in the plastic door on the Independent’s orange distribution box outside of Villa Bakery, located on Ramon and Crossley Road in Cathedral City.
Crap, I thought. I stopped to check the damage; the door was indeed busted, but it appeared that I might be able to engineer a temporary fix with the help of some clear packing tape.
But first things first: I was hungry, and I’d been meaning to try Villa Bakery for quite some time. So … it was time for lunch.
I walked in, scanned the menu at the counter, and ordered the pollo ranchero ($6.75). However, my eyes kept wandering toward the pastry display case.
Hmm. This is a bakery, after all, I thought. So I asked the woman at the counter: What’s your best pastry?
She said the cheese Danish was pretty popular. I added one to my order. Well, now I know why the cheese Danish is pretty popular: It’s the best gosh-darned pastry I have eaten in years.
First, the pastry part of the pastry: It’s flaky, buttery, just sweet enough, and just soft enough, kind of like a really amazing croissant.
Then there’s the cheesy part of the pastry: It actually tastes like cheese—it’s sweet, yes, but it’s got character and nuance.
Put the pastry part and the cheesy part together, and … damn, it’s amazing.
The pollo ranchero was tasty, and I was more than full after eating it and the cheese Danish. But that didn’t stop me from getting another cheese Danish on my way out.
Thank goodness for that broken (and now-repaired) distribution box.