Dave and Rita's sits on Route 96A in Romulus, in the narrow strip of farmland between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes, and from the outside it looks like exactly what it is: a small roadside bakery that you might drive past if nobody told you to stop. Inside is a different story. The cookie case is the main event, and the selection is genuinely overwhelming — thick, buttery cookies in enough varieties that choosing fewer than four feels like a failure of ambition. These are not the thin, crispy type. They are substantial, soft-centered, and made in batches that sell out, which is why showing up early on a weekend matters.

The bakery has won FLX Finest Gold for Best Bakery four consecutive years (2022 through 2025), and Best Cookies recognition every year in that same stretch, climbing from Silver to Gold in 2025. That kind of streak, in a readers' choice poll covering the entire Finger Lakes region, is not a fluke — it is a bakery that has figured out exactly what it does best and refuses to coast. Beyond the cookies, the rest of the baked goods hold up: breads, pastries, and seasonal items rotate through, and everything has the density and flavor of something made from scratch by people who care about butter-to-flour ratios. Dave and Rita's is the kind of place that wine trail visitors stumble into once — usually because they spotted the small sign between tasting rooms — and then build into every subsequent trip. It is a five-minute stop that punches far above its square footage.