Allan's Bakery

Review Highlights

Allan's Bakery is a Caribbean bakery on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn's Crown Heights, founded in 1961 by Gloria and Alan — and still family-run today by their grandson Christian Smith. Righteous Eats featured the bakery as a living piece of Brooklyn Caribbean history, where multi-generational recipes and a deep-rooted community bond have kept it going for over six decades.

• ·Black cake — a dense Caribbean celebration cake built on a vanilla base with spices, extracts, and a slow-soaked fruit mixture of currants, raisins, prunes, pineapple, cherries, orange peel, and lemon peel, finished with rum, wine, and additional liquor; "the taste should be a little fruity — you should feel a little tipsy"; sold year-round but in the thousands during the holiday season, and for weddings and major occasions

Righteous Eats' spotlight: a Crown Heights institution that has survived and served its community for over 60 years on the strength of Caribbean tradition and neighbourhood loyalty. The black cake — a staple at every celebration in the Caribbean diaspora — is the signature, with one regular customer coming in for a slice nearly every week. As Christian puts it: "Thanks to the community, we've been able to survive and be in the community and give back to the community since 1961."

About

Allan's Bakery is a family-owned Caribbean bakery in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood, open since 1961. Founded by Gloria and Alan, the bakery draws on a wide family tree of Caribbean heritage to produce traditional baked goods — most notably their celebrated black cake, a rum-soaked fruit cake central to Caribbean celebrations. It is one of the longest-standing Caribbean-owned businesses in the neighbourhood.