The Rose Bowl and Cafe Tropical’s Guava Cake:

Every time I drove east on Sunset from Los Feliz Nat and Miranda would point out Cafe Tropical and tell me about their guava cheesecake. I got the impression it was one of the best things they had ever tasted. Since I don’t eat fruit I wasn’t jumping at the chance to indulge in guava anything.

I wanted to check out the Rose Bowl Flea Market and needed a coffee so it made sense to hit Cafe Tropical on the way. It is a pretty non de-script storefront and that judging from the cast of characters outside it may share the building with an AA meeting. Inside the place is a serious bakery with oversized confections. Seriously, everything they sell was 3 times the size of a normal baked good. The guava cheesecake comes in full pies or quarter of a pie slices. It has a croissant like crust with a creamy white cheese and guava paste or guava curd inside. Considering this was a fruit pie I was able to get it down pretty easily. I don’t even know if the guava flavor was strong enough for me to tell you what guava tastes like. I tried to focus each bite on the flaky crust because it made the whole thing easier to swallow.

Cafe Tropical is a great neighborhood bakery. I wouldn’t drive across town to get there, but we would all be so fortunate to have a place like this down the block from our own homes. The Rose Bowl turned out to be a bust for me. There is lots of good stuff there but I specifically wanted to find a suit and I didn’t see any.  Oh well.