In the interest of drumming up some discussion, I figured this little pastry shop deserves its own thread. We finally made it here on Halloween- we’re in the Davis/Porter area of Somerville and it’s only 0.8 mile from us, but somehow it feels like a whole different world over in Medford.
I know they were listed in the openings thread back in the spring, but I haven’t seen too much in the way of reviews, so we did our due diligence and tried LOTS of pastries. You gotta do what you gotta do.
The store itself is charming. The staff are yelling out orders in French, which fascinated my wee sprout. Masks are on, there is a strict occupancy limit, and there is no eat-in available. Arriving about 11am on Saturday, there was only 1 person in line outside the store and we waited not more than 5 minutes to be helped.
We basically worked our way around the counter, literally ordering one of almost everything, and 2 koiugn amann (which are only available weekends). Everything was delicious. Some of it was not quite what we expected- ie, the chocolate venoise bread was really a bread with a hint of chocolate, not quite a pastry. But given that, it was still rapidly consumed.
Our favorites were the indulgent Paris Brest, piled high with fluffy icing and excellent praline flavor, and the koiugn amann which were buttery and caramelized to perfection. The plain croissant is excellent, and the hazelnut one turns out to be filled with nutella or some variation on that, also delicious.
We also sampled some sandwiches- the Champignon, while a lovely combination of flavors and beautifully assembled with cornichons nestled in little wrappers of cured meat, was hard to eat as the bread was quite hard. The tuna was our preference, on a softer venoise roll. Both were an excellent value - all sandwiches are $7.50 which seems more than fair. In general, we felt everything was very fairly priced.
They have a sign saying espresso drinks coming soon, and now that we know they’re on the way to the beach, we’ll be frequent customers. Sadly, I did not get any close ups of the bounty, but here we are consuming it after surfing. If you look closely, you can appreciate the beauty of a croissant.
