Turbo Recipe - Little Ferry

I was here a couple weeks ago after not coming here for a couple years. I was very disappointed with my baked goods then and stopped coming. After Covid, I decided to give them another try. Big mistake. I am using the word, beware in my title very specifically as a couple of the refrigerated, whipped cream pastries that I bought were found to contain mold. No, it wasn 't a stray green sprinkle that got wet. It was an very noticeable amount of mold. Any business that can 't keep track of the age of the food their selling shouldn 't be in business. Sorry.

I have visited Palermo’s Cafe Bakery numerous times here and there. Every time I have been there, I always get a cannoli and it is prepared as it should be. I also get an espresso along with my cannoli. I sometimes take other pastries to go. This bakery is solid and they know what they are doing when it comes to Italian pastries. I would go back there and wouldn’t hesitate to try their different offerings.

Out if my last 3 visits here, two have resulted in horrible outcomes. One was to pick up a pre-ordered cake, which was just “OK”. Two of us had a dinner one night consisting of an avocado salad, pizza a wrap. Pizza barely had anything even resembling a topping, salad greens in the salad were mushy brown and the avocado was far from ripe. Wasn’t even able to cut through it with a knife, lacked 2 other items that were supposed to be in it. Wrap took the waitstaff 3 trips because they were out of the actual wrap, didn’t have bread really? This is a bakery! , just ridiculous! Last week we purchased bakery items. What a disappointment!! Croissant was not buttery, flaky, layered pastry dough filled with chocolate, but instead a dry, rock-hard, roll-like consistency devoid of filling and flavor....more like a hockey puck. Fruit filled cheese strudel was the same...hard, dry, almost no fruit filling and tasteless. Chocolate stick, again the same, although it did have chocolate in it. If it’s old...throw it out, don’t sell it to your customers. If you wouldn’t eat it, I don’t want it either! Don’t know what’s going on here, but this WAS my favorite “go to” bakery cafe for a cappuccino pastry . But not any more, unfortunately. Counter staff is clueless as well as too few of them as to what they’re doing. I hope they get back on track and figure out if they want to have walk-in customers or just supply cakes pastries to party wedding venues!

My husband and I got our wedding cake from Palermo's and it was an amazing decision from start to finish. We set up a tasting and as soon as we stepped into the tasting room we felt so taken care of. Ariel helped us throughout and she went out of her way to make us feel like kings. The tasting was so fun and exciting and everything tasted great. It made our decision quite difficult! They were in contact with our venue directly so after we made our selections for the cake they confirmed all delivery and details with the venue. It took out a major stressor for us and the cake arrived BEAUTIFULLY. It was truly gorgeous and delicious. The guests were raving. We chose a naked style with Chocolate Mousse and Chocolate Fudge with a Buttercream Frosting. You should do the same. We can't wait to eat the top tier on our anniversary and come back to Palermo's for more cake and coffee and goodies!

This review is about the cafe offerings at the bakery and not to the adjacent fine dining restaurant (The Cake Lounge). I have been coming here since they opened in 2014 at this location when the offerings and taste were quite good. Lately, however, it has gone downhill. A salad with avocados produced a cold, hard avocado and wilted greens. The Margherita Pizza was devoid of basil, had ordinary supermarket tomatoes, and you had to look for the cheese on the pizza. The panini that was ordered was out of ciabatta bread as well as a few other choices. How can a bakery/restaurant be out of so much bread? The wait staff was also quite disorganized as when they came to our table after we ordered, they did not know what was ordered. It took three people to straighten everything out. The saving grace to this cafe is the desserts which you can order a coffee or cappuccino with some good Italian pastries at a reasonable price.