Chef Peter Rios has owned and run it since 2007, keeping the European pastry-meets-patisserie identity intact while modernizing enough to add a full espresso bar and, in 2023, a second, larger West Town location purely for added cake-order capacity — the original Division Street storefront stayed open and operating, not replaced. The kouign-amann shows up sporadically rather than daily, and it's worth asking for by name: flaky, buttery, sugar-crusted without tipping into dessert-level sweetness, the kind of pastry that separates a real bakery from a coffee shop that also sells muffins.
Custom cakes are the other half of the identity — elaborate enough that Chance the Rapper has commissioned one, which says something about the ceiling here even for a neighborhood bakery. A century in, it's still doing both ends of the job well: the daily croissant run and the once-in-a-lifetime cake order.
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