Tio Santiago Bakery

Closed. So sad, nice bakery, nice people.

This place is CLOSED. Don’t bother going…
That part of town is becoming very poor.

3.5 Stars
Back in the fall I promised to bring some baked goodies to a brunch gathering. I’d noticed Tio Santiago in the hood so it seemed the perfect opportunity to try it out. We arrived around 10:30 on a Sunday morning. The bakery is quite large and filled with racks and shelves of seemingly every kind of pastry and cake you could possibly hope for. After wandering around for awhile I realized the only thing I’d be left hoping for was customer service. We could hear people in the back/​kitchen, but no one ever came out to check on us until we were standing at the front waiting to be rung up.
And that is why I *almost* settled on 3 Stars. I hate being unacknowledged by staff, and I could have had questions about the plethora (
) of unfamiliar items, and I certainly wondered whether or not I was supposed to be opening the cases and serving myself and if I was supposed to be using the trays or paper bags for my stuff. Plus, if we were thieving jerks we easily could have filled a bag with goodies and run out the door. Fortunately, in spite of the complete absence of assistance or supervision we managed to gather the items we wanted and head to the register to pay for said items.
The mere pittance I paid for a sack of baked goods is one reason I bumped my rating up to 4 Stars. I was expecting to pay almost twice as much as I did. The other reason I am giving Tio Santiago the higher rating is that all of the goodies were absolutely delicious. I don’t know what most of them were since no one was there to help and hardly anything was labeled, but the tres leches cake (one Oreo and one something else) was amazing. It even got the stamp of approval from my friend that speaks Spanish and lived in South America for a year.
Next time I’ll try the churros.

Get there early.
Jelly filled churros are pretty darn good. The carrot cake and tres leches are also some of the best I’ve had.
It’s a bakery, so get there A.M. especially on the weekends or you will find all of the good stuff sold out.
Closed 10÷6÷15.

If you are looking for loaf bread, all they have is white.

went there on a thursday afteroon (4pm) in October (today to be exact) based on Unilocal reviews. The bakery reminds of the ones I would pass by in Tiajuana back when I used to attend San Diego. Picked up some baked goods — banana bread like bread, croissants, churros, pig shaped bread, muffin looking bread. Prices were so so. about $ 1 a piece. However, the taste wasn’t so great.
First of the raspberry/​cream cheese croissant was a little too salty for my taste buds and not very buttery or flaky, like what you would expect a croissant to be.
Muffin like pastry and other «breads» were a little on the stale side and not really very tasty.
Banana bread item had a funky artificial aftertaste.
Perhaps because we went at the end of the day, the items weren’t so good.
Interesting experience.

I found this place in a strip mall yesterday. Didn’t get to try out the breads and doughnuts but the cakes were fantastic. They were very moist. I bought 4 pieces. I have been to quite a few Mexican bakeries in town and this place has the best tres leches cake.

What a great little bakery! The roommate and her mom stopped in here out of curiosity and immediate had to take me there. The front area is very bare-​bones. Just an open space with display racks up against each wall. Don’t let the no-​nonsense setup fool you!
Everything we’ve tried (and we’re up to having had pretty much everything at this point) has been amazing. Even the stuff we can’t pronounce. The little cake slices up front are great too. Such a large portion for the price. Everything at this place is a steal. It’s so inexpensive.
If you need a sweet treat, Stop in here. You won’t regret it!

So delish, so cheap! Ever in search of the perfect donut place I stopped in one day after a visit to the fabric store next door. The front is no frills but its clean and the people are friendly. I went in planning on one donut and 10 min and less than $ 10 later I came out with a bag full of bakery items, not one of which was a let-​down. I tried some cake, bread, a donut, and a delightfully fat churro. My taste buds worship Uncle Santiago’s creations, I only wish my thighs could ignore those calories!