‘Cake Boss’ takes the cake!

Fans of the new Hoboken-based TLC reality show “Cake Boss” have been watching the antics at Carlo’s Bakery at First and Washington streets for six weeks, since the show premiered. Owned by Buddy Valastro’s family for decades, the popular local bakery now has a national audience — and so does Hoboken, as scenes around town are shown on each episode, particularly Pier A Park and Court Street (the back of the bakery opens up to the old cobblestone-lined alley)
The cameras have followed Carlo’s minions as they delivered a cake to Amanda’s restaurant on Washington Street, as they went to Pier A to look for birds (don’t ask), as they delivered creme-infused lobster claws to a pregnant woman in town, and on a delivery to a high-profile celebration in New York City.
The show already has its own Facebook page with 20,000 – yes, 20,000 – fans. Many have written adoring comments on the page.
In the last few days, even the New York Times has started writing about the show. This week, they wrote:
“BUDDY VALASTRO, 32, is known as the Cake Boss on the TLC television show of that name, but as he stood atop a butcher-block table in the back room of Carlo’s City Hall Bake Shop here, with a camera crew filming him and several employees, another image came to mind…
“Cake Boss, which began on May 25 and will complete its first season on Aug. 10, follows Mr. Valastro throughout his workdays at Carlo’s, his 7,000-square-foot bakery opposite Hoboken City Hall. On the show, as in the bakery, everything from bungled orders to spats with his employees, many of them relatives, ratchets up the tension.
“ ‘When TLC called me the end of last year to do a show, it was because they wanted a show about a bakery,’ ” Mr. Valastro said. ‘But they also wanted this crazy environment, this fun cast of characters that laughs and screams and cries and is my family.’ ”
Screaming is right. Valastro refers to his workers at times as “you two dummies” or “morons,” but it’s always done with love. (And maybe it adds an edge to the show that Chef Duff on the Food Network’s “Ace of Cakes” would rather not have!)
Are you a fan? Comment below, and watch for a Reporter article on the series soon!