Savoia Pastry Shoppe — Restaurant in City of Rochester

This is not my first visit here, and it will most likely not be my last. Savoia is not an 'every day' pastry & dessert place. It is special. Serving guests, celebrating anniversaries, birthdays, or other special occasions, spending time with dear friends, and you don't have the time to bake and prepare yourself, then you serve pastries from Savoia You can find unique bread, European pastries, European cookies, French croissants, cakes, and more, most of them exactly the way they should be: a nightmare for people with diabetes, and other, sugar, carb, and calorie-caused health problems, with a truckload full of sugar, sprinkles, chocolate, buttercreme, frosting, icing, and everything else the dentist gets a toothache from, but it's fresh, enjoyable, and overall, pretty well done. In Savoia, you're served with a smile, and the staff is friendly and polite. No matter how long the shift, the line of customers, or the pastry list, they're always patient and nice. The atmosphere is a little bit like the back door of the bread and pastry factory in 'Little Paris'. I'm always under the impression that before Savoia, there was a butcher shop in this building, and originally, the store was built to sell meat, while in the back the butchers did their gruesome day's work... If you keep this image in your head when entering Savoia, you find yourself in the middle of a slightly chaotic, overloaded, tiled sales room. You wander between old ragged wire shelves that I consider should actually go into a cooler room and the pastry display. There, you find the goodies stuffed uncharitably without a visible order, unelegant, and uninspired piled or lined up behind the glass. Now, reading all this, one would think I really don't like Savoia, right? Nothing could be further from the truth. I do like it. Really. I'm just not entirely sure I understand it very well. Many of Savoia's cookies and pastries are supposed to be Italian. Well, except maybe some Italian cookies and the pizza, they're not. The cakes, breads, pastries, cookies, and pies, croissants, are from all over Europe, from France to Germany, from Denmark to Belgium, from Austria and Switzerland to Hungary. I tried quite a few of them. They are good. They are just a tiny bit 'off'. The éclairs are a tad too big, too irregular, the lintzer cookies are good, really, but from a 'pastry shoppe' I would expect them to be perfectly round, the top the same size as the bottom, perfectly symmetric, and one looking exactly as the next like they'd come out of the same form. Should you consider asking me mockingly: "Could you do it better?" I would have to say, yes, in fact, I do. The pies, the Danish, some of the bread and cake are so Americanized they have little to nothing in common anymore with their original making. The basic recipe was obviously lost somewhere in the 30s.

Savoia exists since 1929. It is now 2025, and I would expect an elegant, nicely renovated and welcoming store with an inviting store entrance, double doors, for several reasons. To keep the insects out in summer, the rain and the umbrellas out in fall, and the snow out in winter. Discrete water absorbent rugs on the floor during the wet seasons, and of course, mouthwatering, perfect, professional displays at all times. Obviously, Savoia is doing very well. I'm not entirely sure why it's supposed to be important to hang on a shop that should have been renovated 40-odd years ago, and serve pastry that has nothing in common with Europe anymore, except maybe, the name...

Savoia could renovate the shop, go back to really original traditional European recipes, and keep their awesome staff on the salesfloor, and they'd be known far...

Horrible customer service!!!!!! A friend bought what she thought was a cannoli cake - it looked like it in the display case. Brought it to a friend's birthday party, and when we cut into it, it didn't have the ricotta & chocolate chip filling - certainly not 'cannoli'. It definitely was a dry, white cake with buttercream frosting & filling but had pieces of the cannoli pastry on top, just like in the picture that's here on their website. We called the shoppe, told them about the cake, and they argued that it was impossible and that it was a cannoli cake. What kind of shoppe argues with a customer????? My friend went back to the shoppe, asked them to look at the cake and sample the filling. They took it in back, said loudly "there's nothing wrong with this cake" and "No credit or refund" and said "Buttercream" and kept the cake in the back. Didn't return it to my friend, the customer. I wish we had taken pictures of it. The manager didn't come out and talk with my friend. The very least they should have done is talked about with my friend and offer a refund or credit because she wasn't happy that she received the wrong cake. The cake WAS NOT a cannoli cake - but they didn't listen - they argued. Again, what kind of business do you run that argues with people????? So disappointed because others have had good experiences at Savoia. We certainly won't be back, and we'll be very happy to tell others about our experience. There are too many other places to buy goodies...

I ordered a cookie cake from them for Father’s Day and wrote in the description please write happy Father’s Day on the cake . When I received my order it was a plate of Italian cookies . When I complained the manager was rude and said well our cookie cake isn’t a cake it’s a cookie tower and has been for the last 90 years . Well if it’s a cookie tower then call it that not a cookie cake . I don’t know who wouldn’t assume a cookie cake is a chocolate chip cookie with writing when that is what it’s called at every other bakery in America . Maybe you should change your 90 year old menu to cookie tower ! Also I’m sorry I never ordered from you before and didn’t know of your 90 year tradition of calling a plate of cookies a cake you clearly don’t care about obtaining new customers if you think everyone is a existing customer and knows what you mean by “cake” ! When I asked for a refund because they should have called when they saw what I wrote in the description for the writing on the cake and asked if a plate of cookies was in fact what I wanted the manager stated they weren’t in the business of doing refunds because then they would Make more money . So clearly they got my order read the description didn’t care what I wanted and just completed the order so they could make...