Leandro's Bakery Cafe - Essex

We just dropped over earlier today for favorite guilty pleasure Leandro's silky smooth, intensely tart lemon squares. The store was completely dark, the display case and fixtures had all been taken away! It will be a real shame if they are gone for good. I don't normally go way out of my way for baked goods, but Leandro's pastries were well worth the 25 minute drive from Pigeon Cove

I live in California but grew up in Manchester, MA. Eight months ago when I was planning for my wife 's and my wedding reception in Essex, I asked family members who the best pastry chef in the area was. They happily recommended Leandro. I checked out his Facebook business page and was pleasantly surprised with the examples, so I called him up. First of all, you will not meet a more pleasant, patient person in all of New England. He 's a total gentleman and a sweet guy. He was very helpful from the get-go. He answered all of my questions and did his best to cater to my constantly-changing needs. When my wife wanted a certain type of cake one month, he explained exactly how he would create it. A couple months later when I had to change the idea, he was ready to start all over again. I remind you that he did everything with me by phone! No pictures, no taste testing , nothing... we just trusted him. The day of the reception, I visit his bakery for the first time and he had everything prepared and nicely boxed up, ready to go. The cake he made was absolutely BEAUTIFUL. I was walking out with it and a woman stopped me in my tracks and said that is breathtaking, I have to take a picture of that right now . She wasn 't kidding, it was amazing. The reception cake was a layered vanilla cake with caramel buttercream and thin layers of dulce de leche between the tiers. It was so nicely decorated with fall flowers and and leaves that all looked realistic. I 'll try to upload the photos to his Facebook business page, check them out. Go to this bakery and support a local legend, you will not be disappointed. To the humble Leandro and his incredible team... you are all amazing people and doing excellent work! Follow your passion and keep it up, you will go very far.

Love this place! Leandro, the owner, and his staff are very nice and pleasant and the food is great! If you like chicken salad, you HAVE to try theirs! I believe the chicken salad is the best I've ever had! Everything is great! Cookies, cakes, pastries... All of it. Glad to have Leandro's in the neighborhood! He custom makes cakes to order with pretty much anything you would want. Try them out.

I really love this place and the more I go the more I enjoy it. Really tiny shop, everything is made by hand by him. The staff (couple of young girls usually) and Leandro himself (I've never not seen him there) are super friendly and answer all your questions. They do small batches of yummy baked things, beautiful desserts and his cake work is just gorgeous clearly a classically trained pastry chef. They also do sandwiches that are great! I recommend anything on the home made croissants, but the chicken salad. Oh my GOD, this stuff is so great! It's all white, shredded nicely (not chunks, not ground), just the right amount of mayo (not dry, not sopping wet), tiny bits of diced celery (not my fave, but so small and sparse, it's totally fine and certainly no deterrent), and I thought a smidge of onion? It's almost a little sweet? Maybe he adds a little pickle juice or maybe partly Miracle Whip? I'm not sure, but it's really, really good. For $8 you get the sandwich and a bag of chips and the sandwich is loaded with enough filling that I can split it in half and eat it two different times. I really recommend supporting this little business.

A charming little café featuring outstanding chicken salad and delightful desserts. The plum cardamom linzer cookies were delicious, and the salted rosemary shortbread cookies offered a unique and tasty twist. We also enjoyed the fantastic chocolate toffee cookies. The service was friendly as well. We're really glad we decided to drop by!