D’ Aiuto Bakery, Chelsea, NYC

D’ Aiuto Bakery on Eighth Avenue across the street from Madison Square Garden was best known for their “Baby Watson Cheesecake”. The #bakery opened in 1924 and 2nd-generation owner, Mario D'Aiuto took over the business from his father in 1977.

When we photographed the shop in 2008 for our book “New York Nights” we spoke with Mario who told us, “When I took over the bakery and decided to specialize in cheesecake manufacturing, my buyers persuaded me not to use the D'Auito name on the product because they said it was too hard to pronounce. So I chose "Watson" as an American name and added the "Baby" because "everyone loves babies". Nowadays, the Baby Watson Cheesecake is in such demand that we start baking at 4AM and bake around 40,000 cheesecakes a day and then flash-freeze them and ship them out worldwide. We use over 40,000 pounds of cream cheese and 3,000 gallons of heavy cream delivered every other day to make our cheesecakes.” •

Sadly the bakery 🍰closed in 2013 and the building was sold but the #storefront remained vacant and untouched (except for graffiti on its facade) for years. We learned however from our friend @rinaldit2 that its #neonsign has finally been removed. We are not sure what will be moving into the space but we can be fairly certain that it will NOT be an authentic family-owned Italian 🇮🇹 Bakery.