Cafe Riviera

Last weekend, I had to pick up some glasses in Greenpoint so I decided to make a day of it. My mom had visited a couple days before my visit so she gave me some suggestions for places to eat. Before Saturday, I had never visited Greenpoint before; I’ve experienced bad subway rides on the weekends in Brooklyn so I never thought of visiting on the weekend and I never have time on the weekdays to visit. The trip to Greenpoint wasn’t too bad – the G train was running on schedule during the day and it only took about 30 minutes to get there from midtown. My first stop was Cafe Riviera:

My mom went with her friend and had some coffee and pastries and really enjoyed herself, so I decided to do the same. The main street in Greenpoint has a lot of different Polish restaurants and Greenpoint has a large Polish community – this cafe had a lot of locals that didn’t even have to speak English to place their orders because everyone behind the counter spoke Polish. Here are some of their great desserts:

They also had a large variety of macarons:

They have a lot of desserts baked on one large baking sheet and sell them by the pound – I didn’t buy any desserts by the pound and didn’t see anyone order a dessert by the pound while I was there, but they all looked awesome:

I ordered a pretzel that was flaky (similar to baklava), topped with toasted almonds, honey, and powdered sugar:

A cheese danish:

And a large cup of coffee:

The almond pretzel was deliciously flaky and wasn’t overly sweet even though it had both honey and powdered sugar. The cheese danish was too bready and there wasn’t enough cheese with the danish. I purchased three more almond pretzels to bring home because I knew my mom would enjoy them, finished my coffee, and then continued on my Greenpoint adventure.