Serious Eats
Are Bakeries Making a Comeback?
I think about bakeries and baked goods all the time. Do you? My earliest food memory? The sights, sounds, and, above all, the smells of the Cedarhurst Bake Shop, the small-town Long Island bakery where my family would send me for babka and rugelach every Saturday. But that was the early '60s, when there were local bakeries everywhere, at least in the northeast.
Then, almost without warning, local bakeries disappeared. What happened? They disappeared into a haze of supermarket chains. People bought their cakes, pies, and cookies at the local A&P, Kroger's, or Piggly Wiggly. Now, more than 40 years later, bakeries have made a huge comeback, at least in New York and Los Angeles. Serious eaters want to know why.
I think it's because people crave and need authentic, honest food experiences now more than ever, and bakeries and baked goods are the best authentic, honest food delivery system I know.
In New York, so many neighborhood bakeries are opening up that it's impossible even for a baked good nut like me to keep up. Think about it. There's City Bakery, Soutine, Two Little Red Hens, Sweet Melissa's, Amy's Bread, Sarabeth's, and Silver Moon. That's a lot of bakeries, and I haven't even broken a butter, sugar, and flour-laden sweat yet this morning. I still haven't made it to Trois Pommes Patisserie in Park Slope, Brooklyn. How is it? Sounds pretty heavenly. How bad could a neighborhood bakery be when its proprietor, Emily Isaac, is a former pastry chef at the terrific New York restaurant Union Square Cafe?
In Los Angeles, Maury Rubin's City Bakery provides a place for people to get out of their cars and have a delicious tart, a cup of coffee (or divine hot chocolate), and as much human interaction as they see fit. Eric Kayser, surely one of the best of the new breed of Paris bakers, has opened two Breadbar locations in Southern California. Doughnut shops like Fritelli's and cupcake emporia like Sprinkles are finding a warm welcome in Los Angeles, which is at least a little surprising in a town where fitness is practically an organized religion.
Bakeries make us feel good when we walk into them. They provide a much needed "third place" in our culture, somewhere we can gather, feel like we belong besides work and home, and eat something seriously delicious. We need more of them. Thankfully we seem to be getting them. Got a good bakery in your neighborhood? Do tell. Serious eaters want to know.