Bakery Cafés are Here to Stay

By Frank Whitman

Some food trends seem to come out of nowhere, burn bright and then flame out. Remember cronuts, giant cupcakes and bespoke cookies?  But the eateries with staying power seem to gain momentum gradually until they hit a critical mass and become an essential part of food culture.  With steady growth fueled by filling a need, they thrive. 

Bakery cafés seem to have hit that point. There have always been bakeries with cases filled with cookies and cakes and loaves stacked on the wall behind the register.  Step up to the counter, order and take it home.  Bakery cafes, on the other hand, offer coffee (good Euro style), entrées for both breakfast and lunch and a place to sit and savor.  But what really sets them apart is the type of sweets offered. 

Pastry holds center stage.

Croissants are a point of pride, with each establishment baking their own subtly different version of this flaky, hard-to-make French classic.  The crisp multi-layered croissant dough fits into the larger category of viennoiserie that also includes what we know as danish.  It also appears as a cinnamon roll, apple tart, brioche, apricot tarts and many other tempting treats. 

Each bakery café seems to have its own specialties and ethnic background, but it’s the croissants – plain and fancy – that are common to all. 

This year, Connecticut Magazine included a Bakery Café section in their annual “Best Restaurants” lending credence to this growing category. 

The Sono Baking Company was a pioneer.  Twenty years ago, John Barricelli, a third-generation Italian baker, opened it in South Norwalk. Tables along the wall offer expansive views of the bakers at work. 

To borrow from baseball, Barricelli has all the tools. His breads, pastries, tarts, pies, cookies, and cakes are all major league.  There is a full line of crusty breads, beautiful tarts, and seasonal pies and cakes that make any occasion special. On Saturdays, home-style soft and gooey cinnamon rolls are there for the asking. 

The accent at Sono is Italian, although not overwhelmingly so. But at Christmas, they pull out all the stops. Chocolate-orange panettone is irresistible; persimmon puddings are a rare treat; and the fruit and marzipan studded stollen is a fine example, if not strictly Italian.  Sono has a branch store on Tokeneke Road in Darien.

Cafe Dolce owners

Norbert Duda and Zoltan Bona are the Hungarian partners that make Café Dolce so genuine and unique. Bona is the master baker, Duda a polished front-of-the-house guy. Together they create an authentic European café atmosphere. 

The croissants are light and flaky, but it’s the cinnamon rolls that get me out of the house. With or without walnuts, the crisp, buttery, lightly-iced pastry is a treat. The cakes come right off a Budapest café menu and the Begli, walnut or poppy seed, have old-world flavor. The lunch menu includes crêpes (why aren’t there more crêpes in our area?) paninis, daily specials like goulash and more. Seating is under the full-wall mural of a square in Budapest.

The Kneads team

Kneads Bakery Café in Westport is the work of a husband and wife team. Chef Daniel Moreno and Chef-Baker Brittany Moreno, who met at the Michelin Two-Star Blue Hill at Stone Barns.  Let’s start with the fact that they mill their own flour for complete control over quality and freshness. Then, apply their considerable experience and talent and you get some delicious baked goods. The result is great loaves, flaky pastry, sophisticated cakes, and delicious pies (try the Raspberry-Linzer Tart).  There’s coffee, of course, and welcoming seating. As an added bonus, they also offer their hand-crafted Momu ice cream made with fresh flavors and Arethusa Farm cream.  

At Flour, Water, Salt, Bread in Darien, baker Rob VanKeuren has a pretty tight focus.  The standard repertoire, six naturally-leavened sourdough loaves, gets equal billing with croissants – he’s even adopted the term “croissanterie” in the logo. The eclectic roster of flavorful pastries includes kouign-amann (a sort of “salted caramel croissant muffin”), irresistible cardamom buns, bomboloni, and cinnamon rolls in addition to several varieties of croissant. A few good sandwiches slide them into the bakery cafés category, but even without them, the bread and pastry are too good to overlook. There are two branches: Greenwich and newly-opened in New Canaan.

Tim Topi

Tim Topi trained in Rome to become a master baker and then, thankfully, brought his considerable skills to Norwalk.  The Wave Hill brand is a staple of farmers markets throughout Connecticut and into New York, but now, he’s opened a café on Westport Avenue in Norwalk. Of course, there are the unbeatable loaves: Three grain is my favorite crusty loaf while the sliced buttermilk white is essential for toast and sandwiches.  Freshly-milled grains and long slow fermentation make the difference. 

The café also has a full Euro-style coffee setup, a comprehensive line of sandwiches and authentic Roman-style pizza on a sourdough crust. But what catches your eye as you enter, are the pastries and sweets. I’m partial to the crumb-topped coffee cake, but the tarts, cakes, and cookies are equally tempting. Croissants come in a dazzling array of flavors. A window on the side wall gives a look at the kitchen full of gleaming equipment and busy bakers.  I’m told they start at 4:00 AM.

Around the state there are even more bakery café. It looks like this new category of eatery has staying power. Yippee!