Here’s the UWS Dish: Mille-Feuille Bakery’s Vanilla Mille-Feuille

By Abigael T. Sidi

For Mother’s Day, I got Mom her favorite pastry in the world – the mille-feuille, better known in the U.S. as the Napoleon – from one of the Upper West Side’s best French pastry shops, the aptly named Mille-Feuille Bakery.

Mom, who grew up in Paris, could (and does) go on and on about this pastry:

“You see, Abby, the mille-feuille is a true icon of French patisserie, and probably one of the hardest recipes to execute at home. Any bakery that opens in Paris will be primarily judged by two things: how they make their croissant, and how they make their mille-feuille. This bakery does a great job at both.”

At her side over the years, I’ve learned how a mille-feuille’s pastry cream should be fresh, airy, “not too sweet,” with deep but delicate depth of vanilla flavor, and just the right density of vanilla seeds. Even more important, the puff pastry must be perfectly executed, light and crispy, with a thin layer of caramelized sugar on top. All this describes Mille-Feuille Bakery’s mille-feuille to a T ⎯ they have mastered the recipe.

“Mille-feuille” translates to “a thousand leaves,” referring to the cake’s inordinate number of pastry layers. According to Mom, this key to the cake’s crispiness is where bakery owner and chef pâtissier (pastry chef) Olivier Dessyn truly shines. “See the crust? The layers are all there; you can count them. C’est magnifique!” she said with outright admiration. “So much work, you have no idea. Why would they call it Napoleon [in this country]? Mille-feuille perfectly reflects what the cake is about; the name rewards the labor and technique behind it.”

But why is the mille-feuille, specifically, such a teller of a baker’s talents? “There is no room for error with this cake,” my mother said. “It’s all about precision, the perfect balance between structure and lusciousness. And you can immediately tell if it isn’t fresh, when the cream thickens and the pastry loses its crunch. A lot of things can go wrong, and because of that, a good mille-feuille is a great indication of the baker’s dedication and craft.”

Ultimately, she delivered her stamp of highest possible approval: “This is on par with what I had as a kid growing up in Paris. This is the kind of mille-feuille your grandfather would refuse to share with us, so your grandma had to buy an extra one!”

My personal annoyance with the mille-feuille had always been how tedious it is to eat and share. Bite it and the crust falls apart, the cream overflows everywhere; it’s a mess. Try to split it and the same thing happens. “That’s because you don’t know how to do it, Abby,” my mother said. “The trick is to lay the mille-feuille on its side, use a sharp knife and firmly cut through it, like this.” She masterfully split the cake into four pieces, each impeccable. I was shaken, and just a bit embarrassed, by my lack of skill.

Mille-Feuille Bakery started over a decade ago as a computer scientist’s passion project. Dessyn had given up his previous career as an IT architect to take serious patisserie training in France, ultimately working as the chef pâtissier at the Ritz and other Parisian palaces. At some point he even trained with Pierre Hermé, France’s macaron king, prior to moving to NYC and opening the first Mille-Feuille in Greenwich Village in 2011. “The French influence in this shop is everything,” Dyssen said the following year, on an episode of Tasted’s Cultural Kitchen. “It couldn’t be more French, I believe.”

You have got to love Olivier, his wife Nathalie, and their whole team’s dedication to their craft and incredible resilience: They survived: a) an infamous scaffolding that all but hid the bakery from view for what felt like forever; b) the COVID pandemic, during which they remained open for delivery from Day 1; and c) a couple of years of fierce competition from the French bakery chain Maison Kayser, which had set up shop a few feet south (at the corner of West 76th Street) before shutting down their operations in the city a few weeks into the pandemic. Mille-feuille is still here, stronger and more délicieux than ever!

Mille-feuille Bakery is open from 7:15 a.m. till 5 p.m. every day. Pickup and delivery is available, and there also is a welcoming, recently widened indoor seating area. The bakery also has spacious outdoor seating on the large Broadway sidewalk by the Hotel Belleclaire. Gluten-free options are available, including their super famous macarons, and you can even book baking lessons! (A future Mother’s Day gift for sure, when I have the funds!)

The Dish: Individual Vanilla Mille-Feuille ($7.90)
The Restaurant: Mille-Feuille Bakery, 2175 Broadway (between West 76th and 77th streets)

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