Kolache Cafe & Baking Company, Amarillo

Mama Krusty taught her 13 children to memorize her family's famous kolache recipes, just as her father taught her to do at his bakery in Czechoslovakia. Carrying on the tradition at Kolache Cafe & Baking Company, 1 of Krusty's 13 students fills bakers' racks with pastries made by following that long-remembered formula. Inside the café, red walls surround glossy wooden tabletops, and a long rectangular rug emblazoned with Kolache Cafe's logo leads up to the cash register and chalkboards bearing a written menu of kolaches. Each golden pastry is crowned with sweet or savory ingredients including sweet chocolate cream cheese, blueberry, and jalapeño cream cheese with bacon, and signature stuffed kolache pockets surround their cargo with a pastry shell, like a backpack carved out of a large flaky biscuit. Cake bites in flavors such as tiramisu and key lime wait to ride waves of Peet's coffee or fountain drinks into hungry mouths.