Fat Pants Friday: Gold Label Gourmet Food's Raisin and Cheese Pastry

There's something about being handed a warm pastry through a shop window that makes it taste better than it would if it were just plucked from the confines of a glass display case. Such is the case with the specimen above: it's a raisin and cheese roll purchased from Brighton Beach's Gold Label Gourmet Food.

The roll, which is the size of a croquet ball and mottled with powdered sugar, would be pretty good even if it wasn't procured from a middle-aged Russian woman standing in the store's take-out window. It's soft, flaky, and striated with ribbons of what seems to be farmer's cheese. It tastes like cinnamon raisin French toast, or the way an Entenmann's Danish tastes when refracted through the prism of childhood nostalgia. It is, in short, glorious, and an appropriately gut-busting way to either begin the morning or end the week. Thanks to its size, richness, and impressive carbo cargo, it's a true Fat Pants creation, rating a solid pair of sweat pants. And at $1.50, it's also a remarkably affordable way to get half a day's caloric requirements -- you'll spend more getting back on the subway to go home.

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