L!!iz1* E Tampa, tI imiir(P tq iiw wln,,5andTa,5t.


 (Continued from page 11)
 La Oriental Bakery, a Cu-
ban bakery and cafe, has
been in business since 1976.
Located in the heart of West


goods. Since taking over, he
has greatly increased the bak-
ery's sales and has renovated
the location, painting it and
replacing the ceiling.


La Oriental Bakery


place," says Romero. "Seri-
ously. They'll tell you what to
do."
 But Romero understands
the banter; he says it's an His-
panic thing. Born in Cuba and
raised in Puerto before moving
to Tampa, Romero can easily
handle the verbal jabs.
 "It's a lot of joking around,"
he says. "This place, anything
goes."
 Most of La Oriental's em-
ployees are Cubans, and many
only speak Spanish. Romero
tends to get applications for
part-time candidates who've
just come here from Cuba
and don't yet know any Eng-
lish. While business has been
picking up after the begin-
ning-of-the-year lull, Romero
says "it's definitely down from
years before" due to the econ-
omy. "Five, ten years ago, you
open a business, you got a
gold mine. That doesn't exist
nowhere. Now you have to be


realistic."
 Romero comes into La
Oriental at 4 a.m. to get the
day started. Ultimately, if the
bakery does well enough, he
plans to extend the hours and
use the ovens to cook pizzas,
which hell serve with wine.
For now, hell settle for playful
whines from his regulars.

 Mauricio

 Faedo's

 Bakery

 Mauricio Faedo, 68, grew
up in the bakery business,
delivering bread from house
to house when he was only 10
years old. His uncle, Joe Fae-
do, had a bakery on Armenia
Avenue and showed him the
ropes. But as Faedo knows
well, you can't always make
dough by making dough.


Tampa, this shop sells au-
thentic Spanish pastries such
as guava turnovers, chorizo
empanadas and desserts like
pudin de pan and panatela
borracha.
 "It's a local bakery," says
Pablo Romero, co-owner of La


 Though he and his sister-
in-law Miriam Romero co-
own La Oriental, you might
not know it at first based off
the behavior of the regulars
who've called this local bakery
theirs for years.
 "They think they own the


 La Oriental delicacies
Oriental. "Everybody knows
each other."
 On any given day, locals
- whose average age is 70 -
come into the bakery, order
their cafe con leche, a pastry
or some toast, and spark up
some conversation.
 "When it comes to poli-
tics and baseball, that's what
they talk about in here," says
Romero. "Everybody's an ex-
pert."
 While sometimes a heated
argument will reach a boiling
point, most debate is in good
fun. The regulars know not
to take anything personally,
which Romero had to learn
very quickly after purchas-
ing La Oriental over two years
ago.
 "I just got here, and I got
criticized two or three times,"
he says, laughing. "They're
kind of family. They [criticize]
your hair, they cut on every-
thing."
 Romero, 51, had worked
over two decades as head of
an IT department at the St.
Petersburg Times, oversee-
ing 2,500 computers in the
tri-county area before retir-
ing and firing up the stove.
When he was younger, he
used to visit La Oriental with
his parents to pick up bakery


 3uif fnj Confience ,ince 1974

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LA GACETA/Friday, May 6, 2011/Page 13 Section B


 "Right now, the bakery
business is really bad," he
says. "I just hope it turns
around. People aren't com-
ing out to the streets like they
used to. They're not going to
come to the bakery just to buy
a loaf of bread."
 With the decline of the
economy and the ascent of
gas prices, Faedo sees people
saving on gas and just buy-
ing their bread at the grocery
store or somewhere more con-
venient rather than making a
separate trip to his shop like
they used to. Corporate gro-
cery stores have proved to be
stiff competition for Faedo,
who remembers a time when
his grandmother owned a
dairy where St. Joseph's Hos-
pital now stands.
 Faedo is a bread man. His
bakery makes everything from
Cuban bread, Italian bread,
French bread, sub rolls, Kai-
 (Continued on page 14)