This dulce de leche-stuffed cookie helped an Ottawa business survive the pandemic

Toro Eats and Treats on Slater Street sells both baked goods and tacos.

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Published Oct 16, 2024  •  Last updated 4 hours ago  •  2 minute read

Sin-Namon Churro Stuffed Cookie from Toro Eats & Treats in Ottawa Wednesday. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

Toro Eats & Treats

150 Slater St. Unit 104, (613) 235-8332, toroeatstreats.com

Open: weekdays 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., closed Saturday and Sunday

Price: $5 for a sin-namon churro stuffed cookie

Sin-Namon Churro Stuffed Cookie from Toro Eats & Treats in Ottawa. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

Anthony Bailey, the owner-operator of Toro Eats and Treats in the EDC building on Slater Street, says business has at last picked up in the last month, since government workers have been mandated to return to their offices.

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He opened the first incarnation of Toro in 2017 at 210 Slater St., selling lunch-time tacos for as many as 150 people each weekday. But when the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, it pushed his business to the breaking point.

Bailey says he was only able to survive by hunkering down and pivoting from savoury to sweet.

He moved Toro around the corner to 139 Bank St., which had been a Morning Owl coffee shop, another business that Bailey ran. He closed the coffee shop, kept the Toro brand going, and got by thanks to government subsidies.

While taco lunches disappeared with the onset of the pandemic and the emptying of downtown, Toro could sell baked goods for pickup, delivery and at farmers’ markets. Without this pivot, Toro “would have just folded up shop,” Bailey says. “We wanted to stay alive.”

Anthony Bailey, owner of Toro Eats & Treats, poses for a photo in Ottawa Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

Bailey says that for his rebranded business, Toro Eats and Treats, the signature baked good and top-seller has been its “sin-amon churro stuffed cookie,” a $5 indulgence that riffs on churros, even if it’s baked while those sweet, doughy treats from Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-speaking world is deep-fried.

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Bailey’s creation, which he bakes daily before opening Toro at 7:30 a.m., is a hefty, buttery cookie stuffed with dulce de leche, rolled in cinnamon sugar and topped with bits of house-made toffee. It is good, in a guaranteed-sugar-high way.

Sin-Namon Churro Stuffed Cookie from Toro Eats & Treats in Ottawa Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

Toro was able to move from Bank Street to bigger, better digs on the ground floor of the EDC building a month ago. It opened just after Labour Day, in time for the federal government’s return-to-the-office mandate to kick in.

“It is bouncing back for us, but because we are good,” Bailey says.

Toro Eats & Treats in Ottawa Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

PS: If you prefer tacos to cookies, let me tell you that I have very fond memories of Toro’s campechano taco, which combines beef brisket, pork shoulder carnitas, chorizo sausage and chicharron, and which is about as over-the-top, but in a savoury way, as is the churro cookie.

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Other treats of the week:

Supreme croissant at Hugo Cafe

Smoked salmon croissant at Choux Atelier

Apple cider doughnut at Red Door Provisions

Maritozzi at Roberto Pizza Romana

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