Pastelería Ideal — Restaurant in Mexico City

This massive, factory-sized bakery provides every type of pastry, bread, and cake you’d want at extremely inexpensive prices. While not high-end, all the desserts we bought were delicious, and the bread was a rustic multigrain that went great with soup.

That said… this is not your normal bakery. Coming here in the afternoon will feel like a free-for-all. Maybe a hundred fellow shoppers running around collecting and paying. Tables stacked high with foods. It looks like pure chaos.

If you’ve never been before, the order of operations is to grab a large silver tray and your own tongs. Run around stacking all the baked goods you want.

Next, you go to the area where folks are packaging. You drop off your tray and get handed a ticket. They’ll package it and wrap it into either parchment paper or boxes.

With the ticket, you head over to pay. This is usually the longest lineup. Allegedly they take credit card, but I’ve never managed to get it to work and having cash is your best bet.

Finally, after paying, you’ll get a receipt and ticket. Take both back to the person who packed your baked goods. Congrats, you did it.

It’s a unique experience and once complete, you’ll be heading out with kilos of pastry. Amazing. Prices are about 10-20 pesos per pastry, and about 20 peso for a loaf of bread.

Oh yeah, no helpful English-speaking staff. They’ve got enough locals to process that there’s no time for us tourists. Hopefully my guide...

This will probably remain the most chaotic experience in a bakery I'll have in my life.

Place was packed on a Saturday afternoon, with people and trays moving in a glorious and intimidating mass throughout. Once we plunged ourselves into the group it was more akin to a dancefloor than a pastry shop. People shouting, ducking and sliding through the crowd to fill their trays full of delicious pastries.

You then wait in 2 lines, one to drop off your pastry loot and another to pay for it. While holding your tray in the wait is agony, (literally for me as I was very heavily loaded up with multiple pounds of treats) it's probably a good thing as it gives you time to cool down after removing yourself from the melee.

Once we got back and tore into our beautifully wrapped bag, it all started coming together. Why the normally chill locals were in such a fuss. These treats are simply heavenly.

While it was probably all over in about a half hour, it is an experience I'll remember forever. You stay absolutely buck-wild,...

Seeing the high rating of this bakery-pastry shop, we decided to walk 600 meters hoping to try some delicious pastries. Unfortunately, we were very disappointed.

If you are used to high-quality pastries made with butter, and you enjoy French or Italian desserts, this place is definitely not for you. Everything here is made with cheap ingredients, and the taste is simply unpleasant — not enjoyable to eat.

I would not recommend wasting your time visiting this place. Perhaps it might be fine for locals. But if you, like us, are from Europe (we came from Germany) and are looking for quality sweets, just walk past. In this city, cheap sweets will inevitably bring disappointment, because the ingredients used...