This weekend is Day of the Dead. Here’s Pan de muerto/Bread of the dead + various items from La Única Panadería + La Única Restaurant in North York. Feliz Día de los Muertos!

This weekend is Día de los Muertos/Day of the Dead. To celebrate, I'll post a bit about a Mexican bakery and restaurant that I've been frequenting since they opened about two years ago. The first location, La Única Panadería, is at Wilson and Dufferin, and just renovated and expanded their space. It's both a bakery and a casual restaurant, with the menu focusing mostly on antijitos and breakfast.

The second location is at Bradstock and Weston (taking over the old Sazon Latino location). It has opened more recently and is more of a sit down restaurant with most of the same menu as the first location + various rice platters + seafood.

These guys are quite active on social media, with high production advertisements that are only done in Spanish. Both restaurants tend to be consistently busy with patrons, and most of the time I'm the only gringo in the restaurant. Whenever I meet Mexican immigrants in Toronto, I always ask where they go for food, and La Unica tends to come up.

A key appeal with La Unica is that they bake their own bread and make their tortillas in house. At 5 dollars per taco (cheaper if you buy in bulk, used to be 4.50 no tax), I am pretty sure it's the cheapest taco with in-house made tortillas in the GTA. You can compare with prices from places downtown like Los Compas and Campechano yourself. The tortas are a bit more pricy, but are gigantic with fairly fluffy bread.

1. Pan de muerto/Bread of the dead, tamales, and a torta peaking out the left side. Pan de muerto is a sweet bread/pan dulce that has a bit of orange zest added. For those familiar with Asian style bakeries, Mexican pan dulce is reminiscent of Asian style sweet breads but slightly denser and less fluffy. If you want to buy the breads, just pick up a tray and tongs and pick from the shelf displaying all the breads at each location.
2. Pambazo – a sandwich that is dipped in a guajillo sauce, fried up, and stuffed with potatoes and chorizo. This is probably my favourite sandwich of theirs (and the cheapest at IIRC 15, the others are 19-21).
3. Tripa Tacos – These tacos were loaded, but my only issue with La Unica is it feels like the taco filling portion can be inconsistent (had similar issues with Los Compas recently). Whereas Los Gyros nearby is consistent in loading up on meat in their dishes, sometimes La Única can match or outdo Los Gyros in terms of filling, and sometimes it feels like a lot less. If they were consistent packed with filling, the house made tortillas would easily put La Única above Los Gyros for me.
4. Aguachile – The Bradstock location's seafood menu features ceviche, aguachile, and various seafood + rice plates. So far this is my favourite seafood item on the menu. Wasn't a huge fan of the rice plates with octopus/fish so far, but I guess my tastes always gravitate towards aguachile on the menu (I have the same issue at Sinaloa Factory).
5. Vuelve a la vida – "return to life", a seafood cocktail and hangover cure with provenance from the state of Veracruz. Inside is shrimp, oysters, and octopus. The sauce is sweet and tangy. I've noticed quite a lot of representation from Veracruz in the GTA Mexican restaurant scene.
6. Scrambled eggs, refried beans, and rice. A simple Mexican breakfast. The Wilson location is open EARLY at 6 AM, and offers these breakfasts with free refill coffee, and a free mini-pan dulce. You can also order from the standard menu if you want tacos at 6 AM. The bradstock location has brunch available at later hours.

Feliz Día de los Muertos/Happy Day of the Dead everyone, and go Blue Jays!