La Dolce Vita Italian Bakery — Restaurant in Lower Macungie Township

Artificial Ingredients, Sadly

The pastries in the case look beautiful - and classic. They have cannoli and lobster tails and mushroom pastries. We tried about a dozen different pastries from Dolce Vida -- because they all looked so good. Each one was filled with some kind of chemical mixture they use in place of whipped cream. The taste is bad and the texture is worse. Like frothy plastic.

I offered the selection, cut into wedges for sharing, to a large group of dessert-loving family. No one would take more than a bite. Most of the pastries were thrown away.

In addition to the chemical quality of the filling (which was generous in quantity), some of the items were stale. The chocolate mousse cake was terrible. That chemical icing had hardened. When you pushed on the swirl of chocolate chemical icing, it didn't change shape. Literally.

I don't know of another Italian bakery in the Lehigh Valley - so I guess there's no competition for La Dolce Vita, no need to use real cream and butter in their pastries. But I think it would be worth it if they did choose to use real ingredients, because they would get so much repeat business. (A visit to a "real" Italian bakery in Brooklyn or in Chicago might open their eyes to the melt-in-your-mouth quality that you look for in a cannoli or cream puff.) Not only does the whipped cream not melt in your mouth at Dolce Vida, amazingly, it didn't even melt in the sun - seriously. It just remained a solid glob of white plastic foam.

This is no exaggeration. If you go, buy only one item so you can test for yourself. Don't make my mistake and buy practically one of everything!

I wanted to love this place, so I'm sad to leave a bad review. But people considering driving here from some distance to try La Dolce Vida should be warned. Little...

I want to start out by saying that I am really not the kind of person who writes negative reviews, but I am incredibly disappointed in my recent visit to this location.

I decided to go to La Dolce Vita to pick up some pastries for Mother's Day. We are an Italian American family and we have picked up pastries from here before with mixed results. My thinking was that since the bakery had just reopened, the pastries would be fresh and since there was a reassuring piece on their website that all customers were required to wear a mask in order to enter the store, I assumed that this meant that the employees would be taking adequate safety precautions themselves.

When I entered the store, the young lady at the front was not wearing her mask properly (it barely covered her nose and dipped below it as she talked) and she wasn't wearing gloves. When I asked whether she wore gloves to handle the food, she reassured me that she did. I started giving her my order only to watch as she got the pastries I requested without putting on gloves.

When I asked if there were any rainbow cookies left, she went in the back through a doorway I could clearly see through to fetch more. I watched as the baker in the back, who was wearing not only no gloves but no mask, stacked the cookies to give to her with his bare hands.

I left the store honestly feeling very uncomfortable and unsafe with the products I'd purchased. We ultimately decided to try them and were disappointed to find that they were not fresh at all, especially the rainbow cookies. This was not the first time we had gotten rainbow cookies that were not fresh from this location.

I hope that both the safety precautions and product quality will improve at this location after my review, but my family and I will not be returning...

I can't believe I'm on here writing this, but i must.. I have been buying cakes here for my son's birthdays every year...This is the last... The cake was good, a few hours late, but they said they were having oven problems, which was inconvenient, but not the main reason for writing this.. I placed the order in March for a party in May with a deposit of a 100$. Periodically I would check in with Pete.... He gave me his cell phone # so I could send pics of the cake I was ordering. He doesn't respond to messages which was VERY frustrating, then I ordered a chocolate and vanilla cake since he refuses to make marble cake for whatever reason. Fine...Either way, i ordered a chocolate and vanilla cake and texted him about it a few times since the order was placed in March, but he did not reply...I saw that he read my texts, but got no response, and he still got the cake wrong... Was the cake good, yes..Was it what i ordered, no... was it late, yes... I just wish the owner could get it together; he is very talented and he is nice, but does not pay attention and even though the wrong cake was good, that is not ok! I texted him about it and he blamed it on having oven problems and thanked me for the support. The oven problems caused the delay but what the hell do the oven problems have to do with you not making the chocolate and vanilla cake that i clearly ordered? Do you need me to post screenshots of my messages? I will if I need to! Just angry at the lack of attention... Do better! Lastly, the cake was smaller and for 190$, it was barely enough for 35 people which we ended up...