[URBAN NOTE] Progress Bakery, 996 Dovercourt Road

[rfmcdonald]

Progress Bakery (996 Dovercourt Road) is located at the moderately important intersection of Hallam and Dovercourt in the northern fringes of Bloorcourt Village, just a few minutes' walk from my home and kitty-corner to my favoured laundromat. It's a fairly humble place, a miniature convenience store and restaurant that might once have been a community institution in one of Toronto's Italian-Canadian districts as testified by the stand for the Corriere Canadese, but as in Little Italy to the south the local Italian-Canadian population seems to have gone to the suburbs and been replaced by Portuguese-Canadians: The Corriere Canadese stand now holds copies of Sol Português, and cans of Guaraná Brasil are stocked in the freezer. The service isn't that great, but the food is wonderful, with $1.25 bags of a half-dozen egg-white pastries that crunch and melt as you chew them, excellent loaves of bread and rolls, and my favourite veal (maybe "veal," I can't tell) sandwiches complete with peppers and mushrooms for $5.50.