'Rosa Porto may be gone, but her legacy will surely endure. Not merely for the good food, but for the open embrace of a city and country that welcomed her in return.'
. Porto, who had started an illegal cakes business in Castro-era Cuba to make money for her family while waiting for the opportunity to come to the U.S., grew her life’s work into what became far more than just a Cuban bakery. Porto’s adapted to its environs over the years — changing Los Angeles demographics and a dwindling Cuban population — and shifted its menu constantly according to changing tastes.
But does that explain the lines? The feverish civic loyalty to a Cuban-ish bakery with just five retail locations? Does it explain the travelers jamming the distinctive yellow-and-brown boxes full of goodies into overhead compartments on flights out of L.A. to bring to out-of-state relatives?“I lived with an aunt who liked to do cakes and pastries,” Porto said in Spanish, recalling her early memories of food. She lived with the aunt for several years after her father died at a young age.
In the early 1960s, after the family formally applied to leave Cuba, a neighbor approached Porto, now married with a young family, and asked her to make a wedding cake. “It was either custard or guava,” Porto said. It was a hit. “After that, more orders began to come in.” In a photo from 2001, Rosa Porto decorates a cake as Urvicia Garcia watches. Porto, who began selling cakes from her home in Cuba over 50 years ago, died Friday at age 89.
The small menu spiraled out wider and wider, embracing the diversity of the community. “We realized that the more product we added only pulled in more people,” Navarro said. “We were developing our recipes. We found that Filipinos loved mango mousse as well as Cubans. … The Chinese loved the strawberry shortcake. Fruit tarts became popular in the ’80s. We were always looking and researching.”
Nana Otuzbiryan, 44, a pharmacist from Glendale, was patiently queued up at the end of the bakery line. “We like the taste here. It’s different than our culture,” said Otuzbiryan, who is Armenian. “There are pastries and stuff like guava that we don’t have.”
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