Beyond The Cronut (a.k.a The Genius of Dominique Ansel)

Food trends (ahem, ramps) usually send me fleeing for cover. But the cronut sucked me in.  Besides, I’ve been putting off a trip to Dominique Ansel’s bakery since it opened two years ago and what better time to visit than with a stampede of foodie-crazed New Yorkers?

In case you’ve been holed up indoors on a TV binge, the cronut is the brainchild of NY-based pastry chef, Dominique Ansel, formerly of Fauchon and Restaurant Daniel.  The cronut, a hybrid of two notorious gut busters (doughnuts and croissants), is a croissant dough that is shaped and fried like a doughnut, rolled in sugar, filled with a barely sweet Tahitian vanilla cream and finished with a demurely flavored rose fondant. Although Chef Ansel seems puzzled by its success, I can vouch that it hits the holy trifecta of American desserts: fried, sweet, and creamy.

Unfortunately, for the out-of-towners, the cronut is only available at the Soho bakery. Even more unfortunately for the neighborhood folk, the cronut usually sells out within an hour of the store’s opening and has led to long queues and  unwanted aggression:

Indeed, it wasn’t hard to spot the bakery on a  Saturday morning as I simply looked for a long line of anxious faces and stood on queue. Whereas a sighting of most “celebrity” chefs spark a flurry of cellphone flashes, no one seemed to notice Chef Ansel in the glass-enclosed kitchen even as he stepped out to get a cup of coffee. The biggest buzz was: will they have cronuts by the time I get to the front of the line?

Buzz aside, the real star of the show for me is the DKA: Dominique’s Kouign Amann. This opulent pastry with the unpronounceable name is of the Brittany region of France.  The kouign amann (pronounced kween ah-MON) is a yeasted dough that is laminated with salted butter and finished with caramelized sugar. Where croissants are known for their tender flakiness, the kouign amann is renowned for its dense texture and unabashed butter flavor. And the DKA delivers in a most exceptional manner: the caramelized, flaky layers give way to a center of an ethereal and lightly salted, buttery dough. The simplest pastries are the hardest to get right and it is a testament to Chef Ansel’s genius that he can balance taste and texture with such exquisite results. This is the kind of pastry that would make me a regular at any bakery.

But  if you really want that cronut (and you should try it once), get there by 8 (or 9 on Sundays). Even with 20 people ahead of me, the line moved quickly  as the counter personnel have taken to asking only one question when you are ready to place your order: “How many {cronuts}?”

I dare you to be disappointed.

Dominique Ansel Bakery (www.dominiqueansel.com)

189 Spring Street (between Sullivan and Thompson Street)

(212) 219-2773