Today, we are reviewing Nonna Randazzo’s Traditional and Cream Cheese. I’ll be frank, some of y’all are going to hate this review, but it comes from my heart. Now, I was tasked with bringing in the Friday king cakes for the office last week, which is a big deal to me. In my opinion, it’s fine to bring in any kind of unexpected treat on a Wednesday, which is when the stakes are low, and see how it fares. People might love it, people might hate it. But they will probably just be grateful that you brought in anything to share with the class, especially on your own dime. King cake Friday is different. It is office sponsored, first of all. But more importantly, everyone is expecting king cake and it’s important to at least try to please the largest amount of people. With these things in mind, but with a tight work schedule that day, I decided to buy both a traditional and cream-cheese filled Nonna Randazzo’s king cake for the people. I also knew that this was an important portion of my Randazzo’s family research to which I previously committed.

According to the BBKC, Nonna Randazzo’s opened in 2006. This was, of course, one year after Katrina and the unfortunate destruction of two Randazzo’s-family bakeries (named the “Goodchildren Bakery Shoppe” with locations in Meraux and Chalmette), which had been owned by three children of Lawrence Randazzo, who was one of three sons of the OG Randazzo, Sam. Post-Katina, of those children, Joel, and her husband, Felix Forjet, Jr., opened Nonna Randazzo’s in Covington, with additional locations to follow in Chalmette and Mandeville. One thing that that distinguishes Nonna Randazzo’s from the other Randazzo family bakeries is that their bakery uses nonpareils on top of the white icing, as opposed to sprinkles, which is standard for the other Randazzo’s cakes. Now, If you’re keeping track at home, the other Randazzo family bakeries are Manny Randazzo (Metairie), Randazzo’s Camelia City Bakery (Slidell), Caluda’s (Harahan), and Caywood & and Randazzo’s Bakery (Chalmette). Sheesh! Try to keep up! And we haven’t even touched on the legal battles yet!

Apparently, none of the Randazzo’s family puts sugar on the top of the cake because it “makes it too crunchy.” That is a quote from BBKC. I disagree with that school of thought, although I am a Manny Randazzo’s disciple. Which brings me to my actual review of Nonna Randazzo’s cake, which I am clearly putting off because I don’t want to write it. So here we go. Nonna, Manny you are not. I did not enjoy either of these cakes.

First, the traditional. The first note I made on this was “Meh.” Not a strong start. There was something about the flavor on my initial bite that I just didn’t like. It had an after taste. It was not good. I think it was the icing. It was certainly edible, but there was something off about it and, honestly, I wasn’t even that interested in getting to get to the bottom of it. I’ll say that the redeeming factor here was the dough, which was good. If all of the Randazzo’s do one thing right, it’s the dough. All of the Randazzo’s bakeries braid their dough and, friends, after eating this much king cake, I’m here to tell you that it makes a difference in terms of the texture and—I’ve mentioned this before—I have found the dough less dry across the board with braided dough. This is just my personal experience but I feel like it holds up scientifically, probably. It also allows the cinnamon to come through in swirls, which is a good thing. 3 stars.

Now onto the cream cheese. Hooooooo boy. We have a problem here. First, there is just WAY too much icing on this cake. Look at it. WAY too much. And it’s not that good. It had the same issue as the traditional in that the icing had an odd flavor. But here, this was particularly problematic because here, as with Manny’s, the filling is not filling, it is topping. And the cream cheese “filling” was literally drowned in icing. I wasn’t even sure I had a piece with cream cheese in it until I reached the final bite. I took a picture of the final bite so you could hopefully see what I’m talking about. This is a problem for me. This is not what I want. I need more cream cheese than this and I need it to not be suffocated by sugary white icing. And, guess what else? When I bit into the cream cheese, that wasn’t very good either. There was nothing interesting about it. The dough was still good, I guess, but good dough only gets you so far when you cover it with subpar icing. Poor form. I’m sorry, Nonna; I never meant to hurt you. 2 stars.