West Loop · Chicago · Since 1978
Butter,
sugar &
patience.
Forty-eight hours of lamination. Ganache tempered by hand. Fruit from the Green City Market, whipped cream that never sees a stabiliser. Everything in the case was made this morning, a few metres behind the counter — and when it's gone, it's gone.
1978
First oven lit
3:41
A.M. we start
62
Recipes in rotation
11
Bakers on the floor
Ganache
poured daily at 6
What's in the case today
Six things worth the queue
The case is rebuilt three times a day. Morning is laminated pastry, midday belongs to tarts and entremets, and by four the cookie trays come out warm.
Croissant au Beurre
72 layers, three-day ferment, baked dark. €4.20
Fraisier
Genoise, crème mousseline, June strawberries. Only while they're good.
The 4 O'Clock Cookie
Brown butter, 68% chocolate, flaked salt.
House notes
We bake to finish, not to stock.
- — Doughs rested overnight, never frozen.
- — Chocolate tempered by hand each morning.
- — Fruit bought twice a week, in season only.
- — Anything left at close goes to the shelter on Randolph.
Six signatures
Every recipe has its own season.
Tempered daily
Chocolate
June to August
Strawberry
Six flavours monthly
Macarons
Sicilian nuts
Pistachio
Made to order, two days' notice
Celebration Cakes
Petits Fours
Éclairs, tartlets and one-bite entremets, boxed to order.
Our kitchen
Three generations, one oven.
Odette Miel opened a single-window shop on Rue des Amandes in 1978 with a deck oven she bought secondhand from a closing bakery in Lyon. It still runs. Her grandson Théo runs the morning shift on it, and the crust it gives a croissant is the reason we've never replaced it.
Nothing here is scaled for volume. The mixers are small, the trays are copper, and every entremet is glazed one at a time on a turntable that has been in the family longer than most of our staff.
48 hrs
Lamination
83% fat
Butter
Zero by 7pm
Waste
Said about us
Kind words, crumbs everywhere
“The best laminated pastry in the city, and it isn't a close race.”
“I drove forty minutes for a kouign-amann and would do it again tomorrow.”
“Their fraisier ended an argument at my wedding. Genuinely.”
After dark
The
chocolate
room.
Ninety percent of what leaves this kitchen starts the same way: a block of couverture, a marble slab and someone with the patience to temper it by hand. Everything else — the ganache, the bonbons, the drip on a whole cake — comes from that one slow ritual.
tempered by hand, every morning
Field to counter
Strawberry
season never
really ends.
Gariguette in May, bois in July, then a long stretch of imported fruit we're honest about and use sparingly. When the good ones arrive we build the whole pastry case around them for as long as they last.
- — Whipped fresh each morning, no stabiliser
- — Never a jar, never a jam shortcut
- — Genoise cut thin so the fruit stays the point
Two obsessions
Macarons and pistachio, endlessly
six a
day
Sicilian pistachio
Baked, not set
The cheesecake edit
Baked low and slow in a water bath, cracked on purpose once, then rested overnight before anyone's allowed to cut it. No gelatin, no shortcuts — just cream cheese, eggs and a graham base we toast ourselves.
Bake
Water bath, 55 min
Rest
Minimum 12 hrs
Base
Toasted graham
Topping
Whatever's ripe
One bite, gone
The petits fours counter
boxed to order, six or twelve at a time
