Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Newsstand: November 23, 2009
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
Urban Planner: November 23, 2009
It's never been so easy to eat pastry in your underwear. The often surly Portuguese-Canadians at Nova Era Bakery & Pastry will now deliver fresh bread, baked goods, and that delicious coffee right to your doorstep. Plus a free birthday cake on your special day.
Exciting, but what about temperatures, you say? Good question. Because this means adding delivery time to the normal 20 minutes it takes to get a bagel (that's half an hour if you don't look Portuguese), and that, according to our numbers, will cool down the coffee temps considerably. But who orders a bagel at a bakery, you say? We do. And sometimes we even ask for non-fat milk just to see the scowl on the face of the cream-pushing coffee servers. Who wouldn't want to see that face on a Monday morning, you say? Not us. So we'll probably stick to walking down to the shop to get our tarts and rolls. But that shouldn't stop you from ordering. In fact, we're willing to bet that our sweets-loving sports expert, Adrian the Adorable Sports Writer, dialed in an order midway through reading this post.
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Ha-- so bitter, but so true. I fondly remember my days of trying to persuade Nova Era staff to give me the good rolls they keep in the back, and the staff pretending not to speak English, and then going in the back and coming back out with the same rolls they tried to serve me in the first place, and me not giving in, and them finally relenting and giving me the good stuff, but then not letting me pay until they'd let 6 people in front of me, because there's nothing remotely Portuguese-looking about me. That place is a treasure.
wow. this is absolutely the most racist crap i have ever read.
I don't know what you guys are talking about, the bagels at Nova are horrible. The are just bread with a hole in the middle, nothing bagels like about them. Worse than the people at Nova are the ones down the street at Riviera. Amazing bread but if they don't know you, expect to be stone walled the first 300 times you go. Took my family 5 years to start getting a smile.
It's not a question of racism. I'm sure there are lots of very nice, very polite Portuguese people... in Portugal. But Portuguese Canadians are the most surly bunch I've ever met. I've been living in a Portugese neighbourhood for years now and I can hardly get a smile from the girls at the bakery, let alone the cashier at the grocery whom I've been trying to win over for years. And yet, I see them being very nice to people from the Portuguese community. It's weird. It's inexplicable. But it's absolutely true - Portuguese service people are only nice to other Portuguese people.
They actually TOLD me they serve one kind of bun to their Portuguese customers and another kind of bun to people who look like me. That was not my imagination.
Wow, that's some 'tude right there. I know some very nice Portugese families, but these people sound like first grade jerks to me.
Did you beat your popcorn and mini pizza eating records while you were in ottawa?? I mean you did sound kind of fat on the phone today..
PS.. can't believe you bailed on jays-yankees so you could order a 12 piece kfc tonight.
I have been accused of being a lusophobe, simply because I object to waiting 25 mins for service at any one of the otherwise fine bakeries along Dundas. Half thought i was paranoid. See now i am not. Thank you all for sharing these experiences.
PS - have been to portugal. Ppl nicer there. And lusos in canada from Portugal that i have met also seem much more congenial.
now that nova era's been demystified, what's with the pit bulls?
*coughs
Since I'm obviously the only luso-canadian who reads this blog, I say we apply some scientific method to these claims.
It'll require a non portuguese looking experiment partner and perhaps a third party with a time piece to keep track of our observations.
'till then 'tis all but xenophobic hearsay.
Also, you don't go to porkchop bakeries for the bagles, but for the papo secos.
Crazy white canadians.
Phill, you are not the only one. I read the comments and my famously bad Portuguese temper flared up for a while. I go into Nova Era with my blonde boyfriend and we get the same moderate-to-poor service, as far as I'm concerned. I've frequently gotten a snappy "You mean a 'Canadian' coffee?" from them. I don't cry about it.
I have a very not-Portuguese-looking friend who gets a wistful look in his eye whenever pasteis de nata are mentioned and he's never complained about the quality of the service. And no, that's not my imagination either.
Some people just have a sense of entitlement or maybe even a victim complex that warps their perspective. Yeah, that's right. Go buy your bread in Rosedale. Or go to Harbord Bakery and come back and whine about the service the Filipina ladies give you, and while you're at it, make assuptions about Filipinos. Yeah! Or how about immigrants in general? Aren't those guys JERKS?! Yeah!
Also, a lot of the people who work at Nova Era are Brazilian. Torontoist readers would probably have too much liberal white guilt to make fun of Brazilians, though. Yeah! Assumptions!
FYI: People in Portugal are pretty much exactly the same as the people here. Give me a break. Those kinds of statements don't excuse the shittiness of the stuff you people said.
Thats classic Portuguese passing the buck on the poor Brazilians. You want to talk about racism you should take a look at the way those two nations treat eachother. Except when Portugal gets knocked out of the World Cup and they need someone else to cheer for....then all the sudden they're best friends again.
Tik, I was pointing out a fact. I wasn't saying "Those Brazilians are responsible for the behaviour you've noticed." I was basically pointing out that since the people above probably don't know the difference, they shouldn't make assumptions. My great-grandfather was Brazilian and I would no less make rude comments about them than I would anyone else. Call me self-righteous or call me a liar, whatever.
Do you think I'm proud of the insular, homophobic, colonialist, etc., behaviour of most Portuguese? No, I'm not. I hate the World Cup. The behaviour of a lot of the people in Toronto at that time is massively shameful to me. That's not the issue.
Joshua I am an employee of Nova Era Bakery and I'd like to know where you got the idea that we deliver coffee to your doorstep. You should be more informed before writing these false statements. We apoligise if you wait a while to be served but we try to do our best in satisfying our costumers.
I had alot more things to say but I got no time for people who aren't well informed.