Amid a recession, there’s always a few success stories to be told.

P*DE*Q, a new Tower eatery and food producer, is one of them. The name of the company says exactly what it produces: pao de queijo, a Brazilian cheese-filled bread bun.

Started just before the inaugural Fresno Food Expo in March 2011, P*DE*Q was just an opportunity for owner and founder, Flavia Takahashi-Flores, to bring her favorite food from Brazil and produce them for sale.

The inspiration to wholesale the bread buns came purely from the fact that no other company was selling a good pao de queijo mix for consumers.
Using the Food Expo as a launching pad, Takahashi-Flores was able to raise enough money to open a half-retail, half-manufacturing plant at the corner of Echo and Weldon avenues, across from Fresno High School, called P*DE*Q Corner.

Oddly, P*DE*Q Corner’s location has a storied past. While the current business is doing well, its previous two tenants, Javawava and Echo Street Coffee, haven’t been so lucky, the latter going out of business in the Spring of 2011.

Prior to the 2012 Fresno Food Expo, Takahashi-Flores and P*DE*Q were only producing their classic cheese bread. Then they unveiled their latest creations – jalapeño, carrot, raisin and chocolate renditions of their classic tapioca bun.

After trying the new flavors, it’s a tough to decide whether the new flavors are better than the original.
Of the three new flavors, chocolate is the most impressive, as the flavor explodes once you reach the melted and gooey chocolate embedded in the bread.

And even the carrot raisin P*DE*Q is enticing enough that even skeptics ought to give it a try.

The tapioca-based bread is great for those sensitive to gluten, as P*DE*Qs contain no gluten or wheat.

P*DE*Qs run $1.50 a piece and frozen jars of original and jalapeno P*DE*Qs run between $10 and $11.

P*DE*Q Corner is located at 1940 Echo Ave. and is open Monday through Wednesday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

For more information about P*DE*Q head over here.