Here’s the UWS Dish: Croissant et Café’s Plain Croissant

By Yana Krasnitskaya

Sitting at a café with a cup of coffee and a pastry is pretty high on my list of life’s simple pleasures. Some of my most memorable moments abroad have been when I’ve had the opportunity to start my day with a cappuccino and a plain, buttery, flaky croissant.

Unfortunately, it’s been an experience I’ve had a hard time replicating back home, because decent croissants can be so hard to come by; all too often the ones that are sold here are soft — sometimes soggy — and dense, lacking the light, buttery taste and crunch of their French counterparts.

Recently, though, I was able to replicate the French experience – at least to some extent – when I visited Croissant et Café, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it establishment on the ground floor of a residential building near the corner of Broadway and West 70th. I must’ve walked by it a dozen times without noticing it since it opened in July – a fact that deeply saddens me, because if I’d seen it sooner, I might have had a transcendent experience much sooner:

Their croissant was one of the best I’ve had anywhere, France included.

Served in a plain paper bag, it had the burnished golden brown coloring and the classic fold that we’ve come to expect from this beloved pastry. But as everyone knows, it’s what’s on the inside that counts, and that, in a word, is butter, which is laminated, or repeatedly folded and rolled into into the paper-thin sheets of croissant dough. During baking, the water in the butter turns to steam, which pushes the layers of croissant dough apart, creating the characteristic honeycomb interior. Or at least that’s what is supposed to happen. But lesser American bakeries don’t always laminate their dough correctly, causing the butter — which itself has a lower fat content than European butter — to leak out during baking. And American flour is typically milled from a harder wheat than French flour, leading to a less-tender dough.

Happily, that wasn’t the case at Croissant et Café; I could tell by the moist and chewy interior that the butter had been rolled the right way, and the outside had exactly the sort of chaotic flakiness I’ve come to expect in a French croissant. It left quite the mess as I carefully tore off pieces to savor with sips of an equally delicious (and strong) flat white.

While I appreciate that croissants can be a good base for a sandwich or eaten with jams and chocolate spreads, I prefer mine plain so I can taste the intricacies. I’ve eaten croissants that had a good bouncy crumb, and ones that were the perfect color, but when I bit into them, they’d either taste bland or they’d be a little too sweet, and the sweetness would overpower that buttery, slightly savory flavor that I love. But Croissant et Café’s interpretation wasn’t sweet at all.  It really took me back to my trip to Paris last year — the last time I had a croissant of this caliber.

Speaking of France, I always assumed croissants originated there. But in fact, their roots lie in crescent-shaped Viennese pastries, which were introduced in France in the 1830s by an Austrian entrepreneur who opened a Viennese bakery in Paris. French bakers began experimenting with these pastries, introducing lamination, and later experimenting with various fillings, such as chocolate and almond, to create the modern croissant.

Nowadays, croissants serve as a vehicle for both savory and sweet fillings, and Croissant et Café has all of them on offer. In addition to the plain croissant, I also got a ham and cheese croissant shaped in a round spiral instead of the traditional crescent. It had a distinct flavor of cheese woven throughout the pastry, which was punctuated nicely with a mild but still meaty flavor of ham.  I couldn’t even finish half of it, because it was so big – and mind you, that was the mini size. Apparently, you can also get a large size of all these pastries, but when I looked at the display, that size was as big as my head! 

Alas, on that rainy day, I didn’t get to live my fantasy of sitting outside while eating my croissant, drinking my coffee, and watching people go by, so I’ll need to go back in better weather. Believe me, I am not sad about it. 

The Dish: Croissant et Café’s plain croissant
The Restaurant: Croissant et Café, 154 West 70th Street (between Broadway and Columbus). Open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday.