Why go
Testing a filling until it holds
The recipe comes back to the bench until it behaves. Kelly Mencin, chef at Radio Bakery in Brooklyn, builds that repetition into a bakery where croissants, focaccia sandwiches, and bread move directly from production to the people waiting for them. Her work at the counter carries a professional kitchen’s sense of timing. Before Radio, Mencin worked as pastry chef at Rolo’s and as a tournant at Gramercy Tavern, both in New York City, a route that helps explain the bakery’s ease with sweet and savory pressure. She has described the beginning of her appetite plainly: parents cooking and baking at home in Cleveland, a child nearby, and the pleasure of eating before pastry became a trade. At Radio Bakery, that memory does not turn sentimental. It turns into testing. When the team revisits a flavor or recipe, Mencin has said, they “test and test and test.” In 2025, StarChefs named her a New York City Rising Stars Award Winner, attached to the pastry work she is doing now rather than a borrowed reputation from another pass.
Lamination with a sandwich rhythm
The program at Radio Bakery runs through laminated dough, seasonal fillings, focaccia, sandwiches, and bread, with the retail counter setting the pace. The house states that its daily production goes entirely to retail customers, and that everything baked is sold in store on a first-come, first-served basis. That choice matters to the method. The bakery is not spreading its hands across catering, wholesale, and advance orders; the day’s work stays close to the counter. Seasonal croissants carry much of the public appetite. A cherry cheesecake croissant has been described with a New York style cheesecake base, sour cherry compote, and fresh cherries. The Passionfruit Tart shows the pastry side in another register, a 9-inch tart with silky curd, softly whipped crème fraîche, fresh seeds, chocolate, and espresso. On the savory side, the bacon, egg & cheese focaccia makes the bread the structure, not an afterthought. Filled croissants and focaccia sandwiches become parallel disciplines: fold, proof, fill, cut, serve.
The counter before the sellout
The room is shaped by demand. Radio Bakery’s original Greenpoint shop opened in 2023, with Prospect Heights following in 2025, and both Brooklyn addresses keep the brand tied to a counter rather than a dining room performance. The line is part of the working atmosphere, but not the craft itself. Behind it, the pass has to keep moving: trays out, pastry case refreshed, sandwiches built on focaccia, bread leaving while it still carries the day’s heat. The sound is closer to a busy station than a quiet café, with customers reading the case and staff working through what remains. Scarcity here is not a posture; it is what happens when a small bakery devotes the day’s production to the people in front of it.
A Brooklyn bench moving outward
Radio Bakery now carries enough pull that new Manhattan shops have been reported for the Upper West Side and the West Village in 2027, but the craft identity still starts in Brooklyn: seasonal croissants, bread, focaccia sandwiches, and a pastry case governed by return and adjustment. If the bakery’s next chapter grows, the measure will be whether the method stays bench-side, where a familiar craving has to earn its place again. For now, that discipline is easiest to read in Kelly Mencin’s bacon, egg & cheese focaccia.
