Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Dominique Ansel and Clinton St Baking


On March 29, 2014, we decided to try 2 places with rave reviews- Clinton St. Baking Company and Dominique Ansel Bakery.

Clinton St is the the most popular brunch place in New York City. At the time of this writing, it has gathered 4 stars from 2,157 reviews (500 more reviews than the 2nd ranked- Jane). However, the wait can be insane (2.5 hours for table of 4 or 1.5 hours for 2). We decided to go ahead with it as we wanted to use the waiting time to pick up pre-ordered Cronuts ($5 each) from Dominique Ansel 2 weeks ago. 

Cronuts is a croissant-doughnut hybrid invented by Chef Dominique Ansel on May 2013 with various imitations emerged from Berlin to Singapore and Indonesia. Upon its launch, people queued up 2 hours in line, even early in the morning, just to get their hands of 6 cronuts (max). Later on, the bakery allows pre-ordering every Monday starting at 11 am. However, consumers will also face similar frustration as its online system (beta stage) often get time out due to heavy traffic.

Since NY traffic can be pretty bad and parking might be scarce, we decided to walk it out to burn some calories before these calories treats. By the time we were done, we pretty much have walked the across Manhattan twice.

 

Inside the store, there's not much enthusiasm on their faces, probably of the long wait.

We hurried back to Clinton St, just in time to receive text message that our table was ready.







One of the most popular item: 
Pancakes with Warm Maple Butter -- $14
Wild maine blueberry, banana walnut, or chocolate chunk
  
Unlike other pancakes, these are light and fluffy and the maple butter completes it as a succulent meal. However after a while, I found it to be rather monotone as there was not much variety.

My personal favorite of the 2 is:
Southern Breakfast - $14

Two  eggs  any  style, sugar-cured bacon, cheese grits, fried green tomatoes. Apart from pancakes, Yelpers have raved about fried green tomatoes and the bacon. To me, the bacon was the star. I even ordered another side order to bring home. Overall, this is a savory dish to start the day.


So what happen to the cronuts?

Well, we didn't get the chance to eat it till the next day (too full from other meals). By the time we ate it, it was kinda hard. After microwaving it, I was able to soften it up (best to heat up every 5 seconds and as a whole). My first attempt in microwaving was after munching a big hole and realized that there was a filling inside (the filling melted). I don't know how different will it be if eaten fresh, but my first impression was that it's not bad, but not worth the wait. There is only 1 flavor in each month. Since it was March, we got the Milk & Honey (with hint of lavender).


Apart from cronut, we also tried DKA (“Dominique’s Kouign Amann”)- tender, flaky, croissant-like
dough with a caramelized crunchy crust. We have better impression with it, perhaps because we ate it right away.

Later on, I researched more on Cronuts and noted the following:
"Please eat Cronuts™ immediately as they have a short shelf life.. Never refrigerate these treats as the humidity from the refrigerator will cause them to go stale and soggy. Since Cronuts™ are filled with cream, we do not recommend serving them warm or hot."

Well, I guess I need to try it again.

PS. At the time of this writing, the bakery has just reopened a week after it was closed by health department when a video of mouse running past the employees emerged in youtube, just days after my visit.

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