Where to go for the connoisseur's croissant
The 20 best and worst places for a croissant from a foodie connoisseurs perspective.
In my eating disorder recovery, I became a gourmet foodie and epicurean. With time I detached the anxiety and guilt that came with eating in anorexia and binge eating and went from ANOREXIC to BINGER to food CONNOISSEUR (the ABC of my recovery), mindfully eating food I enjoyed and gorgeously savouring the delish flavours like a gourmet food critic. Whilst I did eat with highly nutritious food as my medicine, nourishing my body and brain (food is mood), I did not just eat healthily (when underweight so-called “unhealthy foods” help get you healthy and with binge eating you crave what you deny; have what you want and you find your satisfied and don't binge). As breakfast is the first meal of the day, I started recovery with a croissant and with time became an expert in what makes the perfect croissant. My sister lived in Paris and I stayed with her a lot, so I tried the best and know how they should taste. So here is my list of the best and worst places to go for the CONNISSEUR’S CROISSANT….
THE BEST:
- Paris- just being in Paris and eating a croissant- triumphs every other experience
2. Pret a Manger: Food snobs beware, I have paid the Chelsea prices and tried the gourmet versions and Pret a Manger is still the best for croissants. Buttery and flakey without being too big or small or dry or moist and with the perfect number of pastry lamentations. Perfection, especially when warmed.
3. Wimbledon Village Maisson St Cassien: It’s a random choice for a Mediterranian cafe to be expert croissant bakers, but they are. They are used to serving posh Wimbledon Tennis stars and their entourage and leagues of followers with high food expectations and so their culinary expertise is paramount. I would highly recommend it.
4. Gails Bakery: This chain does a surprisingly delish croissant. They never let you down.
5. Ole and Steen: Located all over London, from Richmond to Chelsea to Mayfair, Victoria and Charing Cross, this Danish Bakery makes a remarkable croissant. Big and buttery. Soft and flakey. It ticks all the boxes.
6. Tesco: The best supermarket (I have tried them all from Aldi to Whole Foods and private wholesalers) by far for croissants is TESCO. They are not defrosted and stodgy, but fresh, warm and lovely.
7. Lidl: Yes these are defrosted. Lidl does the best of the defrosted. A fresh one ALWAYS beats defrosted, but for flavour these are goodies.
8. The Luminary Bakery: This bakery was set up by two amazing women with the aim of helping socially disadvantaged women through their bakery. Not only does it do this, but it also makes delicious, phenomenal croissants. I highly recommend it! They taste so good and by visiting their social enterprise bakery, you are helping them do so much good. Win-win (my stomach and conscience salute you Luminary bakery).
9. Cafe Nero: Most cafe Nero food (like Costa) is crap. Overpriced with limited options and mainly stodgy, sugary food or “healthy” food that is full of sugar and limited flavour. However, I work remotely at the moment and use Cafe Nero as a base sometimes when I am between offices, and their croissants are an easy go-to if I need an on-the-go breakfast. They never let me down. Even when slightly past-it, they always taste good. It’s a pity the rest of their menu is so past-it.
10. Whole foods: A lot of the food in London Whole Foods supermarkets is overpriced “I saw you coming” food made for London Yuppies (young professionals with no mortgages and a large disposable income for discretionary pointless items) or the City/Chelsea/ financial elite. However, they do a dammed fine croissant. The almond one too is divine.
THE WORST:
- Starbucks: AVOID a Starbucks Croissant at ALL COSTS. They are greasy, oily, gloopy, not-flakey and very clearly defrosted and reheated to a ghastly room temperature that leaves a tepid, unsatisfying and incompetent frog of a croissant. Hideously disappointing and worse than erectile dysfunction. You are better off eating soggy newspapers.
2. The Ivy: Usually you pay more, you get the best. Not here. God on earth, the croissant was like a dry old ladies handbag. The antithesis of the soggy Starbucks one. A dry and flavourless mess of a breakfast that left me hungry as it was tiny and annoying as it tasted of nothing. Avoid. The Ivy does haute cuisine well, just not it seems at breakfast.
3. Best Western Hotels: I used to stay in a lot of best westerns for work, and the things they called croissants were basically oily bits of soggy dough. I stuck to the cereal after too many mornings feeling let down and unsatisfied. As Prue Leith would write, “not worth the calories.”
4. The Bluebird Bakery: It’s fancy food in pretty boxes with looks and no substance. All icing sugar and no cake- superficial and shallow. Yet, like with people, when it comes to flavour, it's what's inside that counts. Gross, dry and depressing pastry. Croissants should be so light they taste like they are made of puff pastry without being so. Yet here, the croissant was more fluff than puff and my expectations were left unmet. It almost hurt it tasted so bad.
5. Aldi: I tried both their “fresh” defrosted ones and defrosted a frozen one at home and both were gormless and gross. The frozen one tasted more like a sponge pudding. Aldi fresh pastries are basically bread rolls in disguise. If you want a budget croissant (they cost the same), save your money and spend it at Tesco.
Aldi pastries are basically bread rolls in disguise.
6. Waitrose Cafes: Again disappointing. They sell delicious ones (their Croissants au Beurre de Charentes- £1.60 for 4 pieces of heaven), but for some reason, their cafes seem to sell only un-fresh, stodgy crap. Huge huge huge letdown. I think they keep them for too long, so they dehydrate and so you are served a mollusc rather than a croissant- A fifteenth-century croissant that is more reptile than french pastry. If this was croissant school, the chic french bakery croissants would laugh at these croissants in the playground and bully them for being fat, gormless loser croissants.
7. Sainsbury's: I love Sainsbury's. They do amazing frozen food and fantastic fresh veg options and they are the only place I can get a decent priced unsweetened soya milk, but they make useless croissants. Their bakery is really good. I love the french baguette and they do really nutty wholemeal rolls bursting with texture and flavour, but I hate the croissants. Like with waitrose, buy them in their sealed packs and avoid the “fresh ones” or you will be fresh out of luck and your palate bored to insanity buy these flavourless croissants.
8. M&S: Ok. Usually, I am wrong here. Usually, I would say that M&S on the go food is just fancy enough that you feel spoiled and your palate satisfied. Usually, their breakfast food suits a hedonist. It’s not the best or the worst but you are satisfied. However, when it comes to croissants they go all school dinners on us and leave us feeling like we are at a cheap wedding where the food is done in bulk by an overstretched caterer. Plain, dull and flavourless croissants that completely lack all puff. Avoid my friends, avoid.
However, when it comes to croissants they go all school dinners on us and leave us feeling like we are at a cheap wedding where the food is done in bulk by an overstretched caterer
9. Costa: I hate Costa. Everything in costa is costly, both to your palate, your expectation, your wallet, your health and your sanity. It is reheated and stodgy rubbish. You know a place sells crap food when all their sandwiches have to be served as “melts” like “tuna melts” or “mozzarella and tomato melt. ” If you have to cover it in strong cheese and heat it up to make it taste of something, god knows what you are eating. We usually visit costa on the way to/fro somewhere and are always left wishing we had packed a travel sandwich. Their croissants follow their food trend. They are basically the tuna melt of the sandwich world. Their croissants taste like a petrol service station food or aeroplane food; flavourless and oily and even when heated up, you wish you had either made your own or gone elsewhere.
10. Asda: Are you HAVING A LAUGH Asda. Your croissants are sugary and sweet! This is brioche! You have either mis-labelled or had a brain haemorrhage. Your croissants are soft rolls suitable only for school lunch snacks. They are not even cheap! Asda sells utterly rubbish croissants that should be avoided at all costs. Tesco sells them cheaper and tastier. I prefer Asda over Tesco as a supermarket as a whole, but when it comes to connoisseurs and croissants, avoid Asda and don’t let them con you by selling you a “croissant” that is a sugary mess I would not even want to give my children.
Let me know if you agree or disagree! Remember to trust your own palate and eat what brings you joy. Find peace with food by eating what you want with intuitive food freedom (no restriction or binge). Eat like a food critic!
Copywrite Laura Campbell 23/12/21
