Hani's Bakery & Café

The case at Hani's runs on laminated dough and a muffin that changes with the season, and the window beside it sells soft serve into the evening. It is a bakery and café in the Astor Place blocks of New York City, across from Cooper Union, from the pastry chef Miro Uskokovic.

A pastry chef's bakery, not a coffee shop with pastries

Uskokovic's point of view is the organising idea, and the bakery states it plainly: a child-like love and joy for baking. In practice that means American desserts made with restaurant-pastry technique and a menu that keeps moving, with new drops and special preorders rather than a fixed case. The range runs wider than viennoiserie, taking in breads, custom cakes, coffee and soft serve under the same roof. Seasonal flavours drive both the muffin and the soft serve, so the counter in October is not the counter in June.

Twelve seats and a window

The room is small and bakery-first, with a dozen seats inside and a takeout window for people who only want the pastry. That gives the place two speeds: a short sit with coffee and something from the case, or a thirty-second stop on the way somewhere else. The soft-serve window adds a third and later rhythm, and it has done as much as the croissants to make Hani's a fixture in the neighbourhood. The same counter that sold breakfast pastry in the morning draws a queue for dessert after dinner.

Croissant first, then the seasonal muffin

Start with the croissant. It is the direct test of a bakery like this one, and the lamination, the flake and the butter are what the reputation was built on. The seasonal muffin is the other obvious opener, since the flavour follows what is around and shows the kitchen thinking rather than repeating. Widen from there: the cinnamon roll for something richer, the soufflé egg sandwich if the visit needs to be lunch, a loaf if you are shopping rather than snacking. If you are buying for other people, the custom cakes and the preorder drops are the part of the operation that needs planning rather than luck. Save the soft serve for a separate trip in the evening, when the window is the point rather than the case.