Paderia

With two locations in Orange County and a third in Santa Monica, Paderia (also known as Paderia Bakehouse) has established itself as a particularly excellent destination for desserts and drinks. Vietnamese-founded yet globally inspired, Paderia is best understood as an elevated local alternative to LA’s and NYC’s Magnolia Bakery locations – small but sophisticated shops serving monthly rotating banana puddings, mini cheesecakes, and cookies, as well as Portuguese egg tarts, Filipino ensaimadas, and Portuguese malasada donuts, the latter exclusive to Fountain Valley.

Paderia’s strength comes from doing relatively few things, but achieving such excellence in each that even seemingly simple items taste better here. For example, we’ve gone from gawking at the size and price of their cookies to realizing they’re irresistible: Huge, gooey chips inside the triple chocolate and peanut butter chocolate cookies work so perfectly with their dark chocolate batter that we occasionally skip their other desserts just to experience them again.

Fresh-from oven Portuguese Egg Tarts beat out ones found sitting on shelves at several other bakery chains, and their mini cheesecakes are consistently compelling: Blueberry, matcha, ube, and pumpkin are just a few of the rotating flavors, generally available with a standard cheesecake at any given time. Banana puddings, which previously rotated through flavors (including one with a giant-sized Oreo on top), now have settled into a single basic version that rivals Magnolia Bakery’s classic flavor. (Creamy and light, it’s a great choice to extinguish spice-induced flames from Paderia’s Irvine neighbor, Cluck Kitchen.)