I always heard you have to try a store or bakery at least twice before you can formulate a fair, or consistant judgement at the very least. My family and I are from Brooklyn, and we moved to northern NJ several years ago and have since then been dying for decent pastries, cookies, and/or cakes! We passed Sorrento's bakery a few times and decided to go in and check them out.

The first time we went in, the several cakes showcased in the glass (a pineapple upside down cake, pecan pie, and serveral other fruit-filled pies) looked terribly old. We decided to go with some pastries and cookies instead, and purchased about $80 worth of product. The shells of the cannoli's were terribly stale, although the cream was pretty fresh. The baba rum was soaked with WATER rather than rum- it had no flavoring of rum whatsoever, but rather the taste of tap! The eclairs were terribly stale. The sfoiglitele were dry with almost no cheese filling- those, too, were stale. Every cookie we purchased ( a mixture of florentine lace cookies, pinnoli, and other Italian cookies) were UNBELIEVABLY stale, too! I went back the next day with the product we purchased and the owner/baker told me to get the hell out of his store and not come back if I don't like his baking! I left the baked goods on his counter and left without my refund. I vowed to never go back into this bakery again personally, but my mother went back in this September(this particular incident with me occcured July 10, 2009).

The Thursday before the feast of St. Joseph Festival in Lodi (right in the parking lot of this bakery), my mother went into Sorrento's Bakery to try them out and to bring some cookies and a brithday cake to my house for my daughter's birthday (an additional cake to the one we ordered). The cookies were once again stale like the last time, and the cake was horribly stale, too. My mother told me how when she went into the bakery, she saw the baker (or the owner- since she described the same man I would have described as the man I had the unfortunate experience to deal with and he told me he was the owner), and he poured a cup of coffee for himself and just stared at my mom awkwardly while he drank and she said, "good morning" to him, and he had the nerve to not say anything back to her. Is this terrible or what? If I owned a bakery, I would at least be pleasant to my customers!

The funny part is that I googled Sorrento's Bakery in Lodi, NJ and I saw a laundry list of complaints against them ranging from terrible customer service to stale baked goods! Glad I'm not the only one!