Tamales from Leon Bakery
Leon Bakery is a Mexican bakery on 9th ave in Midtown that does tamales for lunch. These things are pretty wicked since they only cost $1.50 a piece. Apparently that's a slight price increase from what it was before, but it's still quite affordable. The shop is new looking since they underwent a renovation recently and everything looks super clean in there. There's an array of baked goods in there, but since I was there only for savory food, the tamales were the thing that caught my attention. They have two kinds, cheese and chicken. I'm not an expert on Mexican food but I liked these tamales, and from what I could tell, they were fairly fresh.
The cheese tamale is tasty enough if you're not into chicken murder, which I am. The cheese itself doesn't do much for the tamale as a whole. It's actually hard to see the cheese since the color blends in so well with the masa. You would think that maybe what you'd want is some sort of melted, gooey cheese in the middle but the cheese in the tamale is more like string cheese in texture. I wouldn't say it's bad, but really, if you dead animals, get the version with dead chickens in there.
Oh and we get to the chicken tamale. It has chicken! What else do you wanna hear?! The other nice part about the tamale is that it's spicy. There was a piece of pepper in the chicken tamale and gave me a good sweat for such a small meal. I would definitely get this again, especially for the price.
The nice part of Leon Bakery is that you can sit in the bakery to eat your tamales. They got like three tables in the back and you could even grab yourself a beer to go with your tamale if you so choose. What's a lunch break without some Dos Equis? Plus you can't go to the afternoon meeting without making yourself more interesting. Find me a better deal in Midtown!
Next time I might try some of the baked goods at Leon Bakery. But on the way out of the bakery I noticed that they just had four or five tamales left, so I don't know if they have an unlimited amount of these things at all hours of the day or if it's just during lunch time. Keep that in mind if you visit the bakery during non-meal times.
Leon Bakery
695 9th ave.
New York, NY 10036
212-489-6677
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