Jennifer G.
Google
There are a lot of sugar junkies out there who will praise anything sweet. The Nantucket Bake Shop is good across the board, but I see reviewers pointing out things that are not their strongest items as standouts. This review is about their Don’t Miss items.
Portuguese bread. If you are new to Nantucket, this is a lovely, resilient crumb, mildly sourdough bread that toasts beautifully. Something Natural on island makes their own take on Portuguese Bread as well, but as few as I know: the Bake Shop starting making and selling it first, many years ahead. Folks debate on whose is superior, but both are treasures.
Jamaican beef patties and coco bread. If you can handle a hit of hot, try this and your tongue will sing. The chicken patty, and the vegetable patty are also good but the beef is the best. You want to get one coco bread for every patty. Part the coco bread open, and nestle the patty in there like a sandwich filling, and take a bite. The two things separate are so good, but the two things together are both incredibly delicious and also a filling meal.
‘Sconset Sweets. As long as you like nuts, this is the Must Try sweet of the Nantucket Bake Shop. They are unassuming looking little pastry rectangles dusted in powdered sugar. Inside are chopped nuts perfectly spiced with cinnamon, allspice, a few other things as well as a coarse crunchy sugar, the pastry itself is a mouth meltingly tender but not very sweet Pâte Sucrée-like surround which is rounded off by the outer dusting of powdered sugar. It is heterogeneous components of contrasting sweet versus not too sweet, spiced versus simple, crunch versus soft yield, and all of that makes for a pretty spectacular pastry.
The cinnamon sugar diamonds are worth an Honorable Mention. They are like when your grandmother had leftover pie dough, which she rolled out, dusted in coarse cinnamon sugar, and baked. And the mouse ears always delight kids, but you can get those at other places.
