Valerio's City Bakery

 

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marwin a.

San Diego, CA

This is the place to buy fresh, hot pandesal.
Everytime I find myself in the Southbay, I come here to get their pandesal.
I also buy cassava cake.  Cake made from cassava,of course.
They have awesome turons, lumpias,bibingkas & ube cakes.
Freshly baked.
Oh yeah, they have Filipino entrees also, dine in or to go.
They always have enough workers behind the counter so you really do not wait that long.

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Chelsea Jade M.

San Diego, CA

I love Velerio's Bakery at E. 8th Street! I've been going there since I was a kid. I remember always stopping by there before my family and I would go visit my cousins in Orange County. We always bought extra Pan de Sal, Pan de Ube, and a whole bunch of stuff. The people who works there knows us by now so it's really cool. And they make some pretty good food too that are non-bakery. Like dinugoan, though I no longer east that because there's too much meat for my taste.

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52

101

Snake Rattle and Roll P.

San Diego, CA

I love Valerio's --- for so many reasons.   This is the only location I've ever been to and actually, I didn't even know they had other shops.  I'll have to try those.  My best friend as a kid was this Filipino girl named Denise and her family introduced me to so many great Pinoy eateries in the city --- I don't know if I can ever repay them for that!  Everyday after school we would go to her house and her mom would have all this delicious food prepared too.  I learned a lot about food in the years that we were friends.  Too bad she was psychotic... but I digress.

Valerios is located in a little strip mall deal on 8th Avenue.  They have a small Turo-Turo counter which I've never been impressed with EXCEPT for the fact that they have Tocino a lot of the time.  Tocino is one of my all time favorite Filipino dishes!  Small pieces of pork that have been cooked in a kind of super sweet, oily, sticky, red sauce.  It tastes a little like Chinese BBQ Pork, but better, IMO.  No idea how they prepare this.  If you see it on the hot plate though, you should try a little.

The real draw here, however, are their baked goods.  They have tons of fresh Pan de Sal and all of the other delicious Filipino breads we all know and love.  They've also got great Haba-Haba in a couple of varieties.  If you've never tried Haba-Haba, it's basically a small loaf of sweet bread that's filled with your choice of cheese, coconut or ube (purple sweet yam) and then smothered in butter and sugar!  Mmmmm!!!  And yes, their Pan de Ube is delicious!  Small Pan de Sal type rolls filled with sweet Ube paste.  I love to get a bag of these and munch on them on the ride home!  They make great Kalamay too!  Perfectly sweet sticky rice covered in a palm sugar glaze/jelly thing.  SO GOOD!  It's cooked in banana leaf so you get that earthy flavor imparted in the rice.  Definitely try the Kalamay.

HERE'S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THOUGH
Try their Halo-Halo!  I think they make the best Halo-Halo in San Diego!  Theirs is the prefect combination of textures and flavors and they'll wrap it up real nice for you too if you wanna take it to-go.  

It's so special because:

1)  They put a smear of their delicious Ube paste inside the cup before they start adding all the other stuff
2)  They use A LOT of beans
3)  They include banana in the mix.  

If you only try one thing here, let it be the Halo-Halo.  If you really MUST, you can make it "Special" by letting them add a scoop of ice cream to the cup.

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