Frenchette Bakery

Bread first, in a 1929 lobby

The counter opens on boulangerie: baguette and épi baguette as the fixed points, with city loaf, country bread, dark malted rye and fruit bread moving through the racks. Frenchette Bakery opened in Tribeca in 2020, run by Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, the chef-owners behind Frenchette and Le Rock, and it turns a French restaurant sensibility into a daytime bakery rather than a second dining room. Sourcing carries a lot of the work, with organic and local ingredients and ancient or heirloom grains where the bakers can get them. Around the bread sit viennoiserie, sandwiches built on that same bread, pizz’ette, coffee, tea, other drinks and a short pantry shelf. It is a narrow program by restaurant-group standards, and the narrowness is the point.

Alcoves under a vaulted ceiling

The room is a Workstead design set into the ground-floor lobby of a neoclassical tower finished in 1929 by Jardine, Hill & Murdock, which fills the block between West Broadway and Church Street. The space has an arcade quality rather than the shape of a retail unit, and the design answers that with alcoves and eased ceilings tucked under the original vaulting. The effect is architectural and close at the same time, defined pockets to stand or sit in inside a much larger historic interior. This Church Street shop is the original and remains the anchor of the program. The separate Frenchette Bakery at the Whitney Museum runs a broader full-service café on the same French bakery vocabulary, but the Tribeca counter is where the baking is the entire proposition.

Start with a baguette, then work through the case

Order bread before anything else. The baguette and the épi are the staples, and the loaf list, city loaf, country bread, dark malted rye and fruit bread, is where the bakery makes its case. Then take a croissant or another piece of viennoiserie, because the French bakery repertoire is the second pillar and the case also runs to bouchons, canelé, chausson aux pommes and a cinnamon bon bon. If the visit stretches past mid-morning the savory side picks up: sandwiches on house bread and pizz’ette carry lunch, while café, tea and boissons keep it in café territory. Bread first, pastry second, something savory third is the order that makes the most sense, because it follows how the bakery itself is built.