La Paloma Bakery on Macon Road has never had a sign out front that most people would notice. That’s not an oversight — it’s just never been the point. For Ernesto Villanueva, who has run the place for going on fourteen years, the bakery exists because his customers need it, not because he set out to build a brand.
Ernesto came to Columbus from Oaxaca in the late nineties, worked construction for a few years, and eventually started selling pan dulce out of a cooler at a weekend market off Veterans Parkway. By 2010, he had enough of a following to sign a lease on a small commercial space near the intersection of Macon and Warm Springs Road, in a strip of businesses that caters mostly to the area’s Mexican and Central American community. That’s still where you’ll find him, usually at the counter by four in the morning.
Walk in on a weekday and the cases are full: conchas in pink and vanilla, polvorones that leave sugar on your fingers, three or four kinds of empanadas, and a dense, slightly sweet bread called pan de yema that Ernesto makes from a recipe his mother kept on a notecard. On weekends he adds rosca de reyes in season, tamales by the dozen, and a tres leches cake that he’ll sell whole or by the slice but that rarely lasts past noon.
Prices are low enough that you’ll double-check them. A concha runs about a dollar. A full order of tamales — a dozen, red or green, pork or chicken — lands around fourteen dollars. The tres leches goes for around four dollars a slice. This is not a place calibrated for people passing through; it’s priced for the families who come every week.
What makes the food worth driving across town for — and people do drive across town for it — is restraint. Ernesto doesn’t oversweeten. His conchas have a shell that actually snaps, and the bread underneath has some density to it, not the cottony puff you get from mass-produced versions. The empanadas, filled with either pumpkin, pineapple, or cream cheese depending on the day, have a lard-based pastry that blisters slightly when it’s hot. His tamales are wrapped in corn husks and steamed long enough that the masa pulls away clean.
He has one part-time employee, his daughter Lucia, who handles the register on Saturday mornings when the line backs up toward the door. Ernesto doesn’t take custom orders by phone — you stop in, or you know someone who does. There’s no website, no social media presence, no delivery. If you want the tres leches whole for a birthday, you go in and talk to him early in the week.
The shop itself is small and plain: a few tables, a folding chair near the window, a Virgin of Guadalupe on the wall above the register. The coffee is Nescafé, served in a styrofoam cup, and nobody seems to mind. What people come for is the bread, and the familiarity of a place that hasn’t tried to become something other than what it is.
La Paloma is open Tuesday through Sunday, usually from around six in the morning until the cases empty, which on Saturdays can be before noon. If you’re making a trip specifically for something, go early and go in person.
