Diana's Bakery

For those of you not familiar with Saint Louis, I'mma fill you in on one of the spots.  I used to live in a neighborhood called Benton Park, which is filled with lovely old houses and really innovative restaurants that are acclaimed on a national level and just general cool stuff.  Some of this cool stuff is contained in the Cherokee District, which is an historic area that is also known as "Antique Row" because it came to comprise a majority of antique stores in one stretch.

Cherokee fell on hard times and got a little "rough" (I think I saw my first real, live prostitute on Cherokee back in the late '90s.), but people like my old friend Emily Marshall held it down and kept it real.  I spent so many good times at Emily's in the late '90s/early 2000s... but anyway... meanwhile Cherokee Street was becoming a hub of Hispanic culture in St. Louis.  And not unlike other Hispanic hubs I have experienced, the youth/hipsters/movers&shakers want a piece of the action.  Seriously, the place is like a mini Mission.  I mean, I had some damn good carnitas there just the other day.  And Spanish is preferred to English at many joints.  But then there are cool letterpress print shops and an outsider record store/label and myriad other shops.

But I tell you all of this, just to set the scene because Cherokee is also home to Diana's Bakery, a gem of a Mexican bakery.

You can smell the goodness on the sidewalk... and then you walk in and are hit with this....

and this....

(What are those???  Mexican cannolis?)


...and this.

But I really lucked out because they had all of the pan de muerto out.  They also had a good deal of sugar skulls at the register.  I didn't snap them, though.

Beautiful pan de meurto.  Needless to say, with the proximity to dio des los meurtos, the joint was hoppin'.  Go, Diana's!  And you, GO TO Diana's!