Soon, you won’t have to trek up to Downey to buy Porto’s famed potato balls or mango mousse.

Porto’s Bakery & Cafe is opening on Beach Boulevard in Buena Park in about nine months, its first Orange County spot and its larget building.

The Cuban spot, known for French pastries with a Latin flair, has a cult following in Los Angeles, where lines wrap around the building.

Yelp just named Porto’s the No.1 place to eat in the nation. It has more than 5,100 reviews of its Burbank store with a score of 4.5 out of 5.

The 24,350-square-foot space is smack dab in Buena Park’s entertainment district, sandwiched between Medieval Times and Pirates Dinner Adventure. It will be designed by an Italian firm that specializes in bakeries.

The store plans to hire 200 permanent employees and rake in about $15 million a year, Buena Park staff said.

“We know that Porto’s had a lot choices of where to open its first Orange County location and we’re elated they picked Buena Park for their first,” Buena Park City Manager James Vanderpool said.

He noted, just like the city’s amusement parks, the bakery will have a wide draw.

“People come from all over the SoCal area to visit their bakeries,” he said. “At our local airports, it’s not uncommon to see people with Porto’s bags going back to wherever they came from.”

Porto’s started in 1976 in a 280-square-foot store on Sunset and Silver Lake boulevards in Los Angeles. It now has locations in Burbank, Glendale and Downey – and about 900 employees.

Through its growth, Porto’s has stayed true to its roots. It’s affordable, with pastries under a buck, and its most popular items haven’t changed over the years.

“The main staples are still my mothers staples, which is mind-blowing after 40 years,” co-owner Betty Porto said.

Those staples include special occasion cakes, potato balls, meat pies and croquettes.

The Porto family moved from Cuba about 45 years ago. Betty Porto, a teenager at the time, remembers her mother using their L.A. home as a bakery for wedding cakes and birthday cakes. When she ran out of space in the kitchen, she’d put a sheet over the children’s beds and finish her work there. When clients kept coming and space ran out, her parents opened up their first store.

Growing up, the bakery was a big part of Betty Porto’s and her siblings’ lives.

“I remember falling asleep on Christmas trying to roll those (potato) balls…doing 3,000 of them,” she said.

Vanderpool said the family legacy was important to the city too, noting Betty Porto’s siblings, Raul Porto and Margarita Navarro (who are co-owners as well), her mother, Rosa Porto, along with other family members attended a recent groundbreaking.

When the Buena Park store finally opens, Betty Porto says customers shouldn’t fret too much about the long lines. The company has it down to a science, she said, with enough staff to process 100 orders in 11 minutes.

Send North Orange County business news and tips to jclay@ocregister.com.

Contact the writer: jclay@ocregister.com