The long-awaited Porto’s Bakery & Cafe is one step closer to serving up its pastries, cakes and famed potato balls for visitors heading to the “Happiest Place on Earth.”
Disney filed demolition permits this month for the building that previously housed La Brea Bakery in Downtown Disney just steps away from the entrance to Disney California Adventure and Disneyland. The site, which currently houses Earl of Sandwich, will be the future home of the seventh Porto’s Bakery location in Southern California.
The location gets huge foot traffic. In 2023, at least 27 million visitors streamed through the shopping district known as Downtown Disney to enter Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, according to an annual report by the consulting firm Aecom and the Themed Entertainment Assn.
Porto’s Bakery, which started in a small space in a Silver Lake strip mall in 1976 as an extension of founder Rosa Porto’s business in Cuba, has been a beloved institution in Los Angeles for decades. Lines at the bakery’s six locations frequently snake out the doors on weekends and its yellow boxes stuffed with pastries often make appearances on flights out of Los Angeles.
Hundreds of fans swarmed Buena Park when the Cuban bakery opened its first Orange County location in 2017.
The permit filed with the Anaheim Planning and Building Department calls for tearing down the 2,610-square-foot bakery and restaurant and removing two theme park ticket booths. The utilities will be capped and the foundations removed on each site, according to city records.
It is not clear when the Porto’s Bakery location in Anaheim will open its doors. Disney officials and Porto’s representatives did not immediately return emails seeking comment.
The announcement of a spot in Downtown Disney in 2022 generated much excitement. La Brea Bakery shuttered the following year to make way for the beloved Los Angeles institution, but construction didn’t immediately start.
The delay prompted rumors that Porto’s had abandoned the plan for the site, but the bakery put people’s minds at ease last year with an announcement that it would be arriving at the outdoor shopping mall in 2025.
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