Helen’s Bakery

UPDATE: This bakery has been closed, per today’s newspaper, due to numerous severe health code violations.

This bakery offers excellent traditional Mexican sweet breads, desserts, cookies, cakes, and pastries. They also sell menudo/​pancita, and sell ingredients to make menudo/​pancita, posole, and masa for tamales there. There are non-​Mexican cakes, sweets, and pastries there. The people who work there are very nice and speak mainly Spanish. My only complaint about this panaderia is that it only takes cash and not credit or debit cards at all.

This bakery is across the street from Fair Plaza and has been around for years, though I suspect the owners aren’t the original (it’s a Mexican bakery with non-​English speaking employees (owners?)). The sign out front is tall, but is falling apart, as has been for years. My uncle has stated for years that Helen’s has the best menudo in town. In March, my husband and I finally gave it a try.
The bakery is large inside and they had tons to offer-​sweet breads, cookies, cakes, pastries, you name it. We went for lunch. They have a decent menu, including menudo and tamales. I don’t recall what else is on there-​more Mexican fare than New Mexican, but living on the East coast taught me some appreciation for good Mexican once I accepted that it was not the same as my motherland’s cuisine. The restaurant was stifling hot-​it must have been 85 degrees or hotter in there (in the middle of March), but we stuck it out.
I had a bowl of menudo which was delicious; my husband had a bowl of posole, which looked quite tasty. He also ordered a tamale. It did not come with any chile, and like many Mexican tamales, was mostly masa, though the meat inside was good, if not spicy. It was very large, too. The best things, though, were the (flour) tortillas. We took a dozen home, in fact, and I’d go back just for those (they were still warm!). I ordered a Mexican Coke and due to the language barrier with the woman serving us, she seemed quite perplexed when she picked up my Coke and asked us something in Spanish and my husband said, «No, no.» He thought she wanted to know if he wanted a Coke. After she left our table a little confused I realized that she was offering to open my Coke for me. Ha ha. It was a funny exchange. My moderately-​proficient Spanglish failed me there.
The place is CASH only, so while my husband left for an ATM a man approached me and told me to take a couple of loaves of the sweet breads sitting on a table by the door. I didn’t think the guy worked there, but he seemed to be friends of the owners’ or maybe he was one of the owners. Anyway, I took a couple, even though I’m not a huge fan of Mexican sweet breads. Once home, I realized that the breads were more than a day or two old. That or just the extreme heat in that place made the lard they cook with rancid. Anyway, I’ll probably not be buying sweet breads there, but I wouldn’t anyway, so no loss.
I would like to go back for lunch again and to buy more tortillas and try their pastries. Solid 3 stars overall, 4 for the lunch.