Anger Burger

This is a little convoluted, so bear with me:  a few weeks back I was reading the NY Times when I was startled to read a review of a friend of a friend’s ice cream shop in Seattle that I’ve visited countless times.  I ignored the rest of the businesses in the article and then forgot about it.  Then!  Last week my friend Junko asked, have you ever been to Bakery Nouveau in West Seattle?  I said nope.  They were featured in the NY Times, she says, and the little buzzing, dying light bulb that is my memory was flipped on, if briefly.  It didn’t matter.  All I heard were the words “bakery” and “go” and I had my shoes on.

The interior of the shop is mostly functional and curiously dark, a combination that appeals to me.  Though a bright morning, taking photos of the pastry case was a little like coming across fairy lights in the dead of a winter night.  Oooh, pretty.

I adore the purely functional serving trays lined with natural parchment.  It’s not fussy, but it feels right.  It’s a thing I have, probably from working at too many cafes: I hate paper doilies and I really hate those shiny, cheaply stamped out serving trays from Cash & Carry.

Can you believe I didn’t buy a single fancy pastry?  What the fuck is wrong with me?  Somehow I rationalized that it was breakfast and that the items wouldn’t survive transport back to Olympia.  I’m retarded.

I was also immaturely saddened that they didn’t have piles of pastries in their front window.  I had a memory of Florence, Italy, where stacks of premade sandwiches sat on tables outside small bakeries, and if you wanted one you just picked it up and went inside to pay.  By midday the cheese and meats were sweating, but people still bought them.  Why?  Because there’s nothing wrong with them.  Cheese and salami can sit out for hours and be okay.  Americans are prudes.  There was something so provincial and compelling about those sandwiches, and despite being universally disappointing (dry!) I kept buying them.  Likewise, I wanted pastries from the front windows of Nouveau, despite my rational mind telling me: Sunday, those pastries would have been stale.  Shut up, me!

Back and Junko’s apartment, we split everything.  The star of the show was the ham and cheese croissant, that large dark square thing on the right.  I had not realized how accustomed to the same ham and Gruyere croissant I’d become until I bit into Nouveau’s; several cheeses (two? more?) neither of them distinctly identifiable and yet delicious all the same.  It tasted very nearly like a fancified version of my grandmother’s cheddar pimento cheese spread, which I mean in the most complimentary way possible.

Bakery Nouveau is apparently well-known for their “twice baked almond croissant,” which I learned only after I sampled it.  I found it to be a merely pleasant variation of the almond croissant spectrum, but not mind-blowing.  The almond filling was not evenly applied, so the ends were plain croissant.  I can’t really complain: that plain croissant was delicious.  I just don’t think it beats my favorite almond croissant from the Bread Peddler in Olympia¹.

And then we have the jewel of the show, America’s new cupcake: the macaron.  Now, I’ve never been to France, so take whatever I say with an entire salt lick, but my understanding of the macaron is that it should be delicate, soft, and a little chewy.  The flavors should be identifiable but light.  The macarons I’ve developed a taste for inhabit the chewier end of the spectrum, and are sweet but not deadly.  Nouveau’s were all over the place on this scale: neither flavor I tried were chewy, and were in fact so soft that they dissolved in the mouth rather than enduring mastication.  So, not terribly appealing to me.  Though c’mon: almond-based sugar confection?  Still pretty rad.  The passionfruit (above) was definitely passionfruit flavored, though one of my greatest expectations for passionfruit is tartness.  Surely the filling would be tart?  Nope.   The other flavor I ordered was salted caramel, which in the flavor department failed entirely.  If you didn’t know what flavor it was supposed to be, you’d never guess.  Neither salty  nor particularly burnt-sugary, the macaron lacked any notable flavor but sweetness, which was cloying. Still, again: ALMOND SUGAR. Stop complaining.

And if that wasn’t a good breakfast, I don’t know what is.

¹ Which my dad totally dislikes, by the way. And to be fair: they are inconsistent. And their staff is hilariously detached and rude. But when their almond croissants are good, they are good.