b. patisserie

Kouign amann under an Italian marble counter

The kouign amann is the pastry to arrive for: caramelised sugar on the outside, flaky and soft within, sold plain or in seasonal versions that have run to peach-strawberry, pineapple jam and butter, and chocolate-dabbed variations. It sits on a curved Italian marble counter alongside the viennoiseries, with a custom refrigerator behind holding macarons, tarts and mousses. The rest of the case is modern French: individual cakes, entremets, tarts, verrines, almond croissants, a chocolate banana almond croissant, passion fruit bavarois, a passion fruit and almond bostock with raspberries and curd, chocolate caramel toffee mousse, vanilla cassis cake, yuzu lemon tart, cinnamon-sugar brioche feuilletée, kugelhopf, financiers, quiche and a Valrhona fudge cookie. Savoury tartines come on house levain or kamut bread.

Belinda Leong and Michel Suas

b. patisserie opened in 2012 as a modern salon de thé with an open pastry kitchen rather than a formal restaurant. Belinda Leong moved from savoury cooking into pastry at Restaurant Gary Danko in 1999 because she found it more whimsical, stayed eight years, then trained in Europe at Pierre Hermé in Paris, Bubó in Barcelona, Noma in Copenhagen and In de Wulf in Belgium, returning to the Bay Area as head pastry chef at Manresa. Michel Suas brought a separate French lineage: he began baking at fourteen, was head pastry chef at a three-Michelin-starred restaurant by twenty-one, and later founded the San Francisco Baking Institute. Leong tested pastries through pop-ups and coffee shop partnerships in 2011 before the permanent shop opened, and the two took the James Beard Award for Outstanding Baker in 2018.

How to order

Take the kouign amann first, and take it plain if you have not eaten one here before; the seasonal versions make more sense once you know the base. Then choose against it rather than alongside it, since a fruit-led tart or the bostock will do more for the visit than a second laminated pastry. The savoury tartines are the order when the stop is standing in for lunch, and the quiche holds up better than most bakery quiche does. Baking runs all day at a butcher block in full view, so the case is restocked rather than simply emptied, and the smell of butter in the room is not an accident. The kitchen is deliberately informal: no chef coats, no hats, and a clear line of sight to the work.