Villabate Alba

A Sicilian case on 18th Avenue

Cannoli get filled to order at the front counter, and that is the fastest way to understand Villabate Alba. This Bensonhurst bakery and cafe has been on 18th Avenue since 1979, opened by the Alaimo family after they arrived from Villabate, in Sicily, where they had baked bread before crossing to Brooklyn. The compound name records a merger: the family's Villabate bakery joined with Alba, a separate pastry shop whose owner retired and sold up. What that history produced is a full Sicilian repertoire rather than a narrow specialty, with bread, pastries, cookies, cakes, a coffee counter and gelato all running out of the same room.

Cases first, seats second

The rhythm is counter service, not table service. Gelato sits to the left as you come in, then a coffee counter where an espresso and a pastry can be had standing up, then the long pastry cases that most people are here for. Staff work those cases, talk customers through the flavours and pack boxes to take home, which is how the majority of the business leaves the building. Seating is limited, so this is a bakery you carry out of rather than settle into. It runs busy in waves, and the room reads bright and unmistakably Italian: window displays stacked with colour, Italian spoken behind the counter, and a queue that moves faster than it looks.

Cannoli, then cassatella, then gelato

Start with cannoli: crisp shells, ricotta filling, and the item the shop's reputation rests on. Then order cassatella, which is the more specifically Sicilian move, a white-wine pastry closed like a ravioli around ricotta imported from Sicily. From there, build a box on contrast. Pignoli cookies bring almond paste and a soft centre under their pine nuts; rainbow cookies are almond-based with a pronounced strawberry note; sfogliatelle adds the shattering layered shell. Baba au rhum, iris and cardone show how much wider the Italian repertoire runs than the two or three items most people know, and custom cakes are part of the same operation, usually on display in quantity. Do not skip the gelato, which the shop keeps serving through the cold months and makes with Elenka flavours brought in from Italy, so the freezer case belongs to the same transatlantic story as the pastry.