Lafayette Bakery
Butterscotch Coffee Éclair
Spiced Caramel, Lafayette, Birthday Cake Macaron
Glazed Madeline
Canele
Almond Croissant
Blueberry Croissant
Pain au Chocolat
Located in the foyer of Andrew Carmellini’s NoHo hotspot, Lafayette, is a lesser known bakery – the point of delivery for sweet sustenance and artisan breads from Jennifer Yee and James Belisle whose work I’d previously encountered at The Breslin and Per Se, respectively. A grand space amidst the soaring ceilings of the beautiful brasserie with early opening hours and no crowd on the day of our visit we arrived at Lafayette to find the pastries just being laid out for the morning and selecting a wide variety of options to share it was largely a matter of restraint (and later meals) that we did not opt for more. Beginning first with the viennoiserie I will say the same thing that I always do in regard to arriving early because as with most prior experience nothing makes for a better croissant than receiving it still warm from the oven, the double filled chocolate version truly shattering to tooth and leaking liquid dark chocolate onto the counter while the almond and blueberry versions were slightly less crisp due to a light custard infusion but both on par with the best in Manhattan. Moving on to the small canele trio and glazed madeline the texture of the canele was interesting largely as a result of the size and thus allowing for more crunch than custard while the madeline was a bit of a dud, too much sweetness masking the intrinsic lemon tones. Moving last to a decadent and crispy éclair with a soft chew and the flavor of a macchiato alongside three macarons with good crunch but still chilled filling indicating overnight refrigeration I have to hand it to Chef Yee on the flavors, the eponymous version with a gentle earl grey flavor and the spiced caramel far more interesting than the omnipresent salted version.
