Your hunt for first-rate pastries and bagels ends right here. It's not surprising that there's a…read moregreat deli like this in Cary -- a city as stuffed with new Northeastern transplants as it is depleted of old Southeastern woodlands.
Despite the overdeveloped bleakness, Cary is, at least, a good town to find many foods, markets, and restaurants otherwise unavailable in the region.
The pastry case has a wide variety of options -- everything you might hope to find in a Portuguese or Italian bakery in New England in the 1980s (my touchstone for fundamental pastries). They are all apparently made on the premises, and have the particular look of pastries from the Northeast.
Purely in the interest of scientific research, rather than barbaric gluttony, I tried an apple danish, a cheese danish, and a lemon danish. The cheese danish was faultless in taste: The filling was classic New England bakery cheese filling, and the pastry dough was very soft, and light, but not crumbly. Unlike at some Italian bakeries, it wasn't edge-to-edge filled with cheese (though it was the most edge-to-edge of all three danishes, as is customary for the cheese ones, in my experience); you can, and should, easily remedy this by ordering multiples.
The apple danish was of the more cinnamon-crumble-forward style, but it was still terrific. The apples were well-coated small soft bits (unlike at some lesser pastry shops where the apples are crunchy undersweetened slices or chunks).
Lemon danishes are very hard to find anywhere, and it was exciting to see one here. It was also excellent. The lemon filling sweated a little bit, so be prepared to get a little sticky (well worth it -- since this is definitely the right kind of filling for a lemon danish).
The bagels are also top-notch, as you'd expect. They are a tiny bit lighter and smaller than the classic NY deli bagels were a few decades ago. Which is probably a good thing, since the New York ones seemed to be made from lead-208, all-gluten flour, and condensed dwarf star. The taste is pretty correct, though (as opposed to another bagel shop in the region which does manage to make gigantic leaden NY bagels, but which taste like dense white bread). All of the expected varieties of bagels were at the ready, and in good supply. The bagel/egg/cheese/meat sandwiches are pretty much NY deli accurate (but a little lighter -- which, again, is most welcome, compared to spending the entire morning defeating a NY bodega BEC, and the entire afternoon groaning), and carefully yet briskly prepared (with very good quality meat, and with yellow -- the tastier color -- American).
(There also was a slice of chocolate cake -- it, unfortunately, was of the minimally frosted type, with some sort of ill-advised sour cream mixture between the layers. We'll just forget about that item.)
The shop itself isn't quite as densely packed (with either people or pastry) as a NY deli, and is also much cleaner and kinder. The service is simply excellent. Customers are all quickly moved through the line, and the orders are prepared very efficiently. Despite the speediness, everyone behind the counter is very friendly and as patient as needed. The speed of the North is combined with the friendliness of the South -- a perfect combination, especially for those of us who are hopelessly impatient, but have no desire to ever be yelled at while at a deli counter again.
A great business. I hope they flourish for a very long time.
