Noah de Bari - Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

For my 30th birthday I went with a couple friends to DR for a weekend excursion. It was part of my bigger life plan to hit 30 countries by the time I turned 30 years old. Done and done.

During the trip, I didn't plan on actively finding any bakeries, I really just wanted to take in the city and enjoy my time there. The universe, it seemed, had a different plan for me! During our exploration of the colonial zone, we happened upon Noah de Bari, a small, quaint bakery. I was excited initially, because I was looking for tres leches cake and this bakery had it in cupcake form. While I was ordering, I also noticed that they had red velvet cupcakes...how serendipitous!

The cupcake looked pretty good. I ate the tres leches one right away and it was absolutely delicious. I had high hopes for the red velvet cupcake after that.

Sadly, the cupcake did not live up the my expectations. The frosting was very gelatinous, which turned me off. The cake itself was pretty good, it had a nice level of moisture and wasn't too dense. The chocolate flavor level was also pretty good.

Overall, I would definitely chose their tres leches over their red velvet, but if you could get the red velvet without the frosting, I'd take that too.


Price $4.78/cupcake
Cake: moist, good chocolate flavor
Icing: gelatinous, not great
Decorations: simple
Overall Rating:4/10
Website: Noah de Bari

Wright's Deli - Tampa, Florida

Hello dear friends! I had to take a sabbatical from my red velvet cupcake hunt to accomplish some other life goals. I'm happy to report I finally acquired my yoga teacher's certification! Yes, not only am I completely obsessed with cupcakes, but I am also a certified yoga instructor. Big day! The process took a lot of my time and focus and during that time I really had to concentrate on eating and thinking healthy. That left little room for cupcake adventures.

Good news, now that the work is done, I'm back! The next few posts are some back logged adventures I haven't written up yet. Please enjoy while I return to frolicking about looking for the best red velvet cupcake out there!

During a work training, I got to try the red velvet cupcakes from Wright's Deli. I had huge expectations considering all my friends said great things about Wright's Deli. I have to admit though, I was pretty disappointed.

Image from Google Images

The cake was pretty dry, thought there was a decent level of chocolate flavor. The frosting was not a cream cheese base, at least not to my taste buds. It had more of an almond/amaretto flavor to it.

So I reported my disappointments to my friend who highly recommended Wright's cupcakes. He seemed surprised by my disappointments, but said I should try their cake rather than their cupcakes. While I don't really understand why one would be different, I suppose the size of the baked good could lead to differences in heat distributions.

Either way, Wright's definitely isn't at the top of my recommendation list. Their lunch menu, however, is delicious!

Price $3/cupcake
Cake: dry, good chocolate flavor
Icing: smooth, creamy, almond/amaretto frosting
Decorations: simple
Overall Rating:5/10
Website: Wright's Deli