Bakery restaurants in North America
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A
Paillard Café-Boulangerie
This bright and buzzy space has high ceilings, huge windows looking onto the street and a long wooden table down the middle where diners tuck into tasty gourmet sandwiches (ham with green apples and brie; hot roast beef sandwiches with blue cheese, caramelized onions and horseradish), satisfying soups and fresh salads. The attached bakery with its displays of sweet temptation is too hard to resist. It’s a bit of a madhouse at lunchtime.
reviewed
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B
Alki Bakery
This is a great place to grab a coffee and pastry, then sit down at a window seat to partake of the bakery’s free wi-fi connection while digging your beach-front view. Cinnamon rolls and cookies reign supreme, but you can also get takeout sandwiches and salads to eat on the beach.
reviewed
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C
Sprinkles Cupcakes
Pay $3.25 for a cupcake? And you have to wait in that line out the door? Are you kidding – hey, that looks pretty good. Red Velvet? With cream-cheese frosting? And that one? Peanut-butter chocolate? Eighteen more varieties inside? Uhh, can you move over a little?
reviewed
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D
Pastelería Ideal
Mexico’s most glorious array of wedding cakes is on offer at this old-fashioned bakery: this is the place if you need a 70kg, multistory gâteau for your nuptials. Otherwise, there’s a huge variety of breads and pastries with odd names like ‘railroads’ and ‘dark rocks’, whose allusions can only be guessed at. Grab a pair of tongs and stack up your steel tray, then get rung up by one of the scores of girls in blue aprons.
reviewed
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Big Sur Bakery & Restaurant
This funkily decorated, warmly lit house has offerings that change through the day and season. Wood-fired pizzas and stellar burgers share the lineup with more refined - but just as satisfying - dishes like wild salmon with succotash. The bakery pours the best coffee in Big Sur and sells its own house granola. In the words of one local, 'their ham and cheese croissant is...mwa! Tasty shit.' Poke around the spirit garden next door.
reviewed
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Mama’s Bakery
At Mama’s try the kiwi-raisin muffins, great carrot cake or the signature sticky buns. Yum! It also offers egg dishes and wonderful smoothies. This intimate, friendly place is a bit hard to find, but don’t give up. Heading north along Gómez, go about four blocks and look on your left for the bamboo wind chimes under the palapa. The small sign is easy to overlook.
reviewed
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E
Bleeding Heart Bakery
With punk-rock posters, hot-pink wallpaper, the relentless Sex Pistols soundtrack and tattooed counter staff, owners Michelle and Vinny Garcia opened the country’s first wholly organic bakery. The ‘punk rock pastries’ are the draw, but smaller treats (many of which are vegan) and lunch sandwiches are pulled off with flamboyant flair.
reviewed
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F
Lovejoy’s Tea Room
All the chintz you’d expect from an English tea room, but with a San Francisco point of view: art curators talk video-installation art over Lapsang souchong, scones and clotted cream, while dual dads take their daughters and dolls out for the ‘wee tea’ of tiny sandwiches, a petit four and hot chocolate.
reviewed
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G
Spruce Confections
Boulder's go-to bakehouse, where the favorites are the Ol' B Cookie (chocolate, oats, cinnamon and coconut) and the Black Bottom Cupcake (a chocolate cupcake with cheesecake in the middle). Pair either with the Spruce Juice, possibly the world's greatest iced vanilla latte. They have sinful scones and filling salads too.
reviewed
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H
Gypsy's Bakery
Experience Churchill at this fun local hangout. The walk-up counter and cafeteria-style eatery have basic settings with a touch of local charm and the menu is extensive with a touch of international flair, or vice versa. Everything from cappuccino to pastries to grilled char is made fresh and delicious.
reviewed
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I
Europane
With its concrete floors, small wooden tables and jumbled baskets of unmarked pastries, Europane doesn’t exactly ooze warmth. But buttery bearclaws, fluffy croissants and smooth cups of coffee make up for any lack of coffeehouse coziness. Arrive early for croissants; they sell out.
reviewed
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J
Alliance Bakery
Order your macaroons, red-velvet cupcakes and other creamy-frosted goodies in the bakery, then take them to the ‘lounge’ next door (or out to the sidewalk tables) and make like a local by hanging out, reading or tap-tap-tapping on your laptop using the free wi-fi.
reviewed
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K
Macrina
You might have to wait in line, especially if you want to sit at a table, but as soon as you bite into your breakfast roll or lemon lavender coffeecake, you won’t care. Macrina makes some of the city’s best artisan bread and decadent snacks.
reviewed
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L
La Espiga Dorada
Doña Betty Pompa has operated this bakery for nearly 50 years from her home in a grand old building built in 1837. Try the fluffy sweet bread called concheta or a perfect meringue cookie. There's no sign; just follow your nose.
reviewed
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M
D'Angelo Pastry & Bread
Come in the morning for a fresh-from-the-oven flaky croissant, poached eggs and big cups of strong coffee at this sidewalk café and bakery off Lower State St. The best pastries go quick, so get here early; the bakery closes at 14:00.
reviewed
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N
La Boulange
The best buy amid Union boutiques is here: 10 bucks gets you half a tartine (open-faced sandwich) with soup or salad, a fresh-baked macaroon, and all the cornichons and Nutella you can grab from the condiment bar.
reviewed
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O
St Honoré Boulangerie
Insanely popular for its luscious breads and pastries, this modern-rustic bakery also serves tasty panini sandwiches, vegetarian soups and oven-fired pizzas. Snag a sidewalk table on a sunny day.
reviewed
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P
Danés
Dessert lovers flock to this neighborhood bakery that turns out a luscious array of Mexican and European pastries, from dark chocolate-oozing pan de chocolate to fruit-stuffed empanadas.
reviewed
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Bagelry
The bagels here are real (boiled, then baked), and come with fantastic spreads, especially the hummus and egg salad. Check out the bulletin board for local goings-on.
reviewed
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Q
Boulanger Français
The smell of freshly baked pain au chocolat will destroy even the smallest of diets. Pastries are prepared using tried-and-true recipes from France.
reviewed
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European Street Cafe
If you just don't know what you want, this place has a lengthy menu, enormous bakery case and over 150 kinds of beer.
reviewed
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S
Pasticceria Natalina
A bright green awning announces the little bakery of Natalie and Nick Zarzour, who achieve the most authentic Italian sweets in the city by importing the hard-to-find ingredients (including pistachios, rosewater and Sicilian sheep’s milk ricotta) from the motherland. The creations change daily, though all are made with unfailing attentiveness. The luckiest visitors pick up cassata, a Sicilian liqueur-soaked cake filled with sweet ricotta cream, and a box of old-fashioned Sicilian lemon cookies – bites of buttery, crumbly goodness.
reviewed
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T
Baked & Wired
With one of the nation’s great universities a spilled cappuccino away, you’d think Georgetown would have more hip coffee shops, but alas, there’s a lack. B&W makes up for this lost ground with a studio-chic interior and, more importantly, great coffee and some of the best cupcakes in DC. It’s a supremely cheerful, smile-at-the-world sort of place, just the right kind of sunny disposition this occasionally stuffy neighborhood needs.
reviewed
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U
Patisserie Philippe
Pastries lighter than air that won’t leave a dent in your wallet. Come for the impeccable ham-and-cheese croissant or classic quiche Lorraine, but ignore that European glass counter or you’ll skip straight to dessert of tarte tatin loaded with caramelized sweet-tart apples. The secret is top-quality local ingredients, with Meyer lemon delivering tang to tarts and premium butter making that $1 bag of cookies a decadent investment.
reviewed
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V
Mimi's Fried Pies
These pies are a cross between Aussie meat pies and Southern-style pot pies, but being handheld there's an empanada influence, and they were dreamt up in long-ago Oklahoma by Mimi's grandmother, who most likely had never seen an empanada, so there's that.
Sweet Mimi fills the flakey dough with cherry, apple, chocolate, coconut cream and pecans, but also gets savory with chicken and broccoli, spinach and mushroom, cheese and pepperoni and more.
reviewed
