Food Stuffs: Doughy, Melt-In-Your-Mouth Taro Buns At Liu’s Sweet Tomatoes Bakery

Food Stuffs is a column exploring the gastronomic landscape of Bensonhurst and the surrounding neighborhoods. Each entry will cover anything and everything remotely related to food. because here in Bensonhurst, food is always news.

We’ve written about the banh mi at Liu’s Sweet Tomatoes Bakery (6305 20th Avenue) before, but felt we’d been doing our readers a disservice if we didn’t revisit the Vietnamese eatery to explore its decadent baked goods.

On a recent visit to Liu’s, while waiting eagerly waiting for my sandwich, I discovered the gastronomical delight that is the taro bun – by accident, really.

I really just needed something to go with my cup of creamy Vietnamese coffee, so I grabbed one of the golden buns from the glass display. Filled with a vibrant purple yam filling, these doughy buns offer a subtly sweet and unique flavor that is particularly satisfying when washed down with a cup of Liu’s coffee.

While the staff at the family-owned bakery are always warm and hospitable, the language barrier continues to pose a challenge at Sweet Tomatoes (on a recent visit, motioning for the check resulted in my server handing me a Post-it pad and pen), so really choosing a taro bun is a game of chance – you never know what you’re going to get. On my next visit to the bakery, the bun I selected was glazed with egg and daintily decorated with sesame seeds. Inside was a surprising, bright-yellow, jam-textured pineapple, which was equally delicious, but significantly sweeter than my first taro bun experience.

If you don’t have much of a sweet tooth, also worth trying are the plain buns, topped only with a sugary glaze, which are just bloated pillows of doughy goodness with no filling inside – a simple and delicious coffee accompaniment.

The best part? The buns and coffee at Sweet Tomatoes each cost under a dollar making them an ideal morning snack to grab before heading to work in the nearby N train.