Tikal Bakery II

Place is small I Come to buy Bread and Longaniza its good. I come from Anaheim just to buy these things but this will probably my last time coming. The customer service is awfull. The owner is a Lady who is real witch she is also rude. I agree customer service has alot to do with owning a buisness I really dont know why shes still in buisness after being so rude to the customers.

My family loves this place my husband is guatamalan and they can’t get enough of this bread. We now live in L.A. Area and I still drive out to riverside once in a while to get bread. I would give this place 5 stars but the owner is rude and nasty she never has ever once been nice to us and we used to go on a weekly basis. After my most recent exchange of words with her I will not be returning sadly. This day in age it’s all about customer service.

I love this bakery. We’ve been buying our bread from here for years. They are as authentic Guatemalan bread as you can get without actually being in Guatemala. This bread brings back memories of sitting in my aunt’s kitchen in Guatemala sipping coffee at 5 in the morning. It’s a very humble store with a lot of beautiful Guatemalan artwork & a picture of Rigoberta Menchu on the wall. In my opinion they are cheap you can get 3 breads for $ 1 plus they’re located in a central part of Riverside on Mission so they’re very easy to find. :) I hope this review helps this is definitely a place to go for delicious, authentic, Guatemalan bread.

I’m addicted to their pastries. They seem so simple like anything you could get at a Mexican shop but yet I have cravings often for the ones from Tikal.
Well first off the pastries aren’t Mexican they are Guatemalan and maybe there is a little mystical Guatemalan secret recipe they use that is deceptively simple to the eye but tricks the taste buds.
It could all be marketing too. It could all be in my head that these pastries are different from Mexican pan dulce. Why am I fighting it? Why am I confounded by the simplicity of these pastries?
Anyways to me they are delightful. Simple pastries with simple delicious textures. They are best early in the morning when they are fresh they are an extra special treat.
They have Guatemalan tamales wrapped in banana leaves here. I like them but I wish they had more filling. They are comprised mostly of masa. The salsa that accompanies them is absolutely delicious though. I would lick that off a plate.
Small mom n pop place. Cash only. Friendly people and you will often see the same lady working the front. The tables in the place are hand crafted by family so they have a nice charm to them.

I was in town visiting for work and tried this place for lunch. It didn’t really look like a restaurant from the outside – or the inside, for that matter. There was enough space for 30 tables but they only had 3. I had a papusa and a tamale and they were very very delicious. The food looked and tasted fresh and homemade. Handmade hot sauce and pickled (?) cabbage and carrots were served with the food. Yum.

I love this bakery. They are wonderful. The taste of everything is incredible.

I’ve never had Guatemalan food before eating at Tikal Bakery, but this place is definitely worth checking out. The spot itself is an unassuming building across the street from Tio’s Tacos. The glass storefront is painted with the store name and the words «Guatemalan» and «Papusas.» Simple enough.
The shop itself is quite empty. There’s a small refrigerator against one wall, with pineapple soda, pepsi, some plantains, and crema for sale. A row of bakery shelves along the back wall has cheap pastries. There’s a set of shelves in the center with piggy banks on one side (gorillas, Tweety Bird, and the like) and then various sundry items on the other side (sandwich cookies, rice, etc.). At the counter you can order said papusas. Mine just had cheese (oops they forgot the beans) and my dining companion’s had cheese, beans, and loroco (flowers). The lady said that there’s sometimes a pork product that she can add in but there wasn’t any on this particular day. I also got some of the pastries (3 for $ 1) which included sugar cookies and many pastries that you’ll find in Mexican bakeries but that I don’t know the names of. They also had danishes filled with pineapple, which were 75 cents.
So back to the papusas. After we ordered we waited at one of the few small-​ish tables against the window. We were the only ones in the store for the entirety of the time we were there. At one point we ventured around the shop and I could see one of the ladies in the kitchen area pressing out the masa for the papusas. About 15 minutes later our food arrived. Half the plate was filled with a red sauce and on the other half were the papusas in all their glory. A cabbage-​based slaw was in the center and some green hot sauce accompanied our plates.
The papusas were hot and fresh. They didn’t have a particularly strong flavor, though this may be at least partially attributable to the fact that mine had nothing but cheese inside. The masa was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside with some of the melted cheese oozing out. The sauce (I believe it was tomato-​based) was delicious and added a lot of flavor to the dish. The hot sauce was really, really hot — use in moderation.
This isn’t the place to go on a date or for a business lunch, since it isn’t really a restaurant but more of a bakery/​shop with savory food and some seating. And since everything’s fresh, it’s not a «grab and go» place either. But it’s worth going for the hot-​of-​the-​stove food, and is definitely a worthwhile lunch spot if you don’t have to impress your boss by a place’s interior decoration.