Not that it’s unloved (there are lines every day), but the current iteration of their cardamom bun is a thing of majesty and wonder.
Its super-flaky laminated croissant-style dough is soaked in cardamom syrup during baking which crystallizes into a glassy light caramel. It’s then dotted with blackberries stewed in tarragon syrup. Today’s batch were just astonishing.
It’s fantastic. Their new riff on pan dulce is delightful. It’s more of a brioche bun than your typical pan dulce but it has a wonderful corn flavor and isn’t overly sweet. Petitgrain > SMFM makes for a great Wednesday morning.
I meant to post this earlier (went 2 weekends ago to get some goodies for a friend’s b-day)… Tomorrow is their 1-yr anniversary, and one of the people working there said that they were planning to do affogatos then.
I don’t see anything on their IG about it, so I take no responsibility if my memory/info was wrong.
Tremendous, I picked these up around noon on a Saturday. The above three items rang in at $20 before tip.
Chocolate Chip cookie
Kouign-amann
Chocolate meringue pie slice.
It’s my first visit and I’m having vapors over here. The choc pie is super rich, but not cloying and the pie crust is very good. The kouign-amann was superb. It woudl be hard to see it again, and not repeat it, but I want to try everything there. The chef/owner was there and working hard. The other FOH I spoke with were cool and likeable.
Clemence is awesome. She can be a bit intense at times, but she really is a lovely woman and if the place isn’t slammed she’s happy to talk shop. Can’t believe you didn’t get a single croissant!
Clarifying about chef/owner “working hard.” I didn’t see Clemence being intense - I saw her managing her store, and being kind and calm with an unhoused woman. All of the employees stayed focused and her tiny business didn’t visibly skip a beat.
The cherry and pistachio croissant photo in this thread is the thing that tipped me into going. I had wanted one of those, and a cinnamon roll. However, they didn’t have cinnamon rolls when I was there - and I think I only saw a savory croissant.
I kind of blacked out when I saw that beautiful meringue with the pie, and the crystallized sugar on the kouign-amman. They had those displayed in a rightside up/upside down/rightside up single line to show off how much crystallized sugar was on each one*. That is exactly the kind of pastry bravado that moves me to purchase. Really delicious.
*my brain loves that carmelized spill of anything, and immediately pulls up memories of Pequod’s pizza, or the plates of pan fried dumplings at Beijing Pie House.
A couple new-to-me things in the display case today.
Top left is potato and tallegio - I was very happy to see this as I needed some carbs this morning and it really hit the spot. The pastry was incredible of course and the potato and cheese filling was nice and soft and seasoned appropriately.
Bottom is pistachio lemon - This was an absolute banger. The pistachio amarena cherry I posted up thread is phenomenal, but almost too rich to eat the whole thing. This version with lemon curd? was just perfect. It had the right amount of acidity and sweetness to balance the pistachios. Definitely grab one if you see it in the case
