Lake Bakery — Restaurant in Varenna

severe racial discrimination alart! The owner of this bakery was extremely rude, and I experienced clear racial discrimination during my visit. My mom and I walked into the store in the morning, took less than 2 minutes to choose the items we wanted, and then joined the queue. As 2 customers before us were being served, some white customers entered the store. Despite the fact that I was standing directly by the side of the counter and notified her with raising my hand, the female owner ignored my request to place an order and proceeded to serve the other customers behind me. Even after I waited for them to finish, she continued intended to serving people behind me. She scaned through my mom and me and arrogantly asked, "Who is next?" despite me having been there all the time. This absurd behavior only stopped when the white tourists behind me indicated that I should be served first. (I also want to thank them for that.)

We were in Italy for six days, and this was the first time I experienced such blatant racial discrimination. I speak fluent English and have never been treated like this anywhere else. Moreover, we hadn't even interacted with the owner before she began treating us differently from other customers simply because of our skin color. I hope that fellow Asians who read this review are fully aware and avoid buying anything from this shop. Lake Como is a beautiful place, but the ignorance and rudeness of this shop owner will ruin...

I discovered my love of bread here! Those who know me KNOW that I don’t care for bread. But when we happened upon Lake Bakery I thought I’d give it a try, and it was an absolute revelation. Oh, so THIS is what bread’s supposed to taste like! The focaccia here is beautifully baked and seasoned. You pick out the pieces you want, and they can toast those that you want to eat immediately.

I would definitely recommend the onion and cheese focaccia and the thin (unleavened) cheese focaccia. The strawberry tart/ pie is excellent as well! The strawberry was real and the shortening didn’t have the strange aftertaste of lard like we’d tasted at other bakeries. I can’t speak for the other tart flavors but I’m sure they’re all amazing.

If you have allergies, proceed with caution, as the two employees who helped us on separate occasions, while well-meaning and very pleasant, weren’t very familiar with the types of bread or made a mistake in identifying the flavor/ toppings. We’d ordered what we thought was an onion and cheese focaccia to discover that it was tuna, onion and cheese. We weren’t upset, as the tuna bread is excellent, but those with any allergies should take particular care.

An absolute MUST when...

Unfortunately, I can't post a picture of my apple cake that was divine (because I already ate it) but I cannot stress just how wonderful it was. I walked in with a few minutes to spare before running back for the train.

The service was absolutely perfect, friendly, informative and I had a lot of questions because I was unsure about the size of the apple cake (after a long weekend of indulgence) but it's one of the best I've ever had. I ended up eating half of it the next day but it still tasted delightful after a 6 hour journey in my backpack in serious levels of heat.

This is somewhere that you should not miss en route back from visiting the gardens at Villa Monestero close by and not only did I enjoy my cake but the owner gave me a free cantucci biscuit without even buying anything. He was so helpful, with perfect English....