So while this trip will take us many a place in search of tasty food, we knew that Paris would be the place to find “the best” croissant…and after being here 7+ weeks, I feel I’ve done a *thorough* job tasting my way through the city. Read: I eat croissants literally every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Obviously in the spirit of research!
So what would we say makes a croissant the “best” croissant? First – consistency is key. Not just of the croissant itself but of the bakery producing them. I couldn’t pick a bakery as having the best croissants if Tuesday, the croissants are meh but on Friday, the croissants are magic. So that factors in…but the key factors are 1) the flakiness and crunch of the exterior, 2) the buttery taste of the interior and 3) the overall freshness of the croissant.
So it’s Paris – there are literally bakeries on every corner of every street here – and all of them sell croissants. We found them in train stations, at cafes, at bakeries, etc. I’ve ranked my top 3 bakeries for consistently good croissants – with explanation – below. If you’re ever here, pleeeease try at least one of these!!
Sidenote: I really STRUGGLED to finalize these rankings. Each bakery has had really quality croissants…each has given me at least one croissant that I nicely had to inform Nick he could not speak until I was finished eating it…
#3 Eric Kayser Bakery – so this is a chain in Paris and similar to Paul or Pret a Manger, it looks like it has started to infiltrate a few of the major U.S. markets…but there’s a good reason for that. This was the place I was willing to walk half a mile in the mornings to get a consistently delicious croissant. In our neighborhood (but with many locations elsewhere in Paris and beyond), the croissants are always buttery, always flaky and as Nick laughed the first time I ate one…the kind of croissant you eat walking down the street and between bites all you can do is “mmmm….oh my gosh…mmm” because it’s. Just. So. Tasty. Truly. So why #3? The consistency didn’t stay and I had some decent croissants but on my average trip there…they were just that – average.
#2 Moulin de la Vierge – we discovered this small Parisian bakery when we visited Paris for a part of our honeymoon in 2015 and I ate a croissant (or two) a day from there…but when we got back for this trip, I didn’t assume I would want to go back. But after our first 10-15 days of trying croissants closer to our apartment in the 5th, we just HAD to go back to this bakery, about a 20 minute walk from the Eiffel Tower. There is just something special about these croissants – they have the perfect balance of flaky, crunchiness with a sumptuous buttery moistness that is spot on every single time we go. There wasn’t one close to our apartment this time but we went out of our way to go to it during our stay and it never disappoints. I had to rank this #2 because while I never had a bad croissant there, I only tried them 3 times as opposed to the other two bakeries that I tried…a lot more than 3 times…
So then…
#1 Maison Gregoire (literally our corner bakery, just downstairs from us…a privilege!) – of all the croissants I’ve had in Paris, this is where I had THE single best one. That perfectly flaky, melt-in-your-mouth, warm, just out of the oven bite. When we first tried this bakery because of its convenience, the croissants were just average…but then something special happened. They started producing consistently amazing croissants. I don’t know if I lucked out with a new baker, started going at different times or just had a fluke the first time I went with a bad croissant but these croissants are pure magic. When you bite into them, you get that crunchy sound, those flakes of buttery goodness falling off (and all over your clothes) and then each bite has the perfect proportion of that crunch with the most perfect buttery inside. This bakery I will MISS when we leave tomorrow.
Needless to say, I truly tried my way through Paris with baked goods…if you ever come here, try to hit at least one of these places!