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From ‘crookies’ to flavored versions: The French croissant reinvents itself to battle American snacks and attract Gen Z
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- Authors
- María D. Valderrama
- Published
- Mar 17 2024
- Word count
- 1296 words
About 15 years back I was fortunate enough to walk into a cafe just in time to overhear an incredible exchange betweeen an American tourist and a French restaurant owner in Lyon. “You have ham?” “oui” “and you have cheese” “oui” “so you can take the ham and the cheese and put it on a croissant” “non, this is not croissant. Croissant is croissant” I treasure that memory, the perfect intersection of the US’s customer is always right mentality and the uncompromising French approach to tradition.
Evidently times are changing.
I once heard it said that in France, the customer is king... They executed their king.
Imo if you refuse customer request because it's "wrong" (in their opinion) and not out of inconvenience you're just an asshat gatekeeper.
I actually believe they're holding their culture back by refusing to not evolve with times. It shows lack of flexibility and hostility towards customers and different tastes, when food should be all about a shared, welcoming experience especially when it's a service you're running.
I hold a personal disdain over 'ketchup on everything' but I understand it's a personal preference. I usually grab hot sauce if one is available because I like heat and acid, it's the same thing. And don't get me started about pineapple on pizza, that debate is fucking ridiculous.
Also, that doesn't mean the chef can't know best. I believe in trusting in the kitchen to produce the best version of the meal that's possible but it doesn't mean some folks just don't like coriander (or think they don't). Why tease people whose wallets you're after, I don't get it.
Edit. I probably should add I'm not a self-centered American, just self-centered.
Everyone needs some money to live in our society, but once you got some it simply becomes a matter of priorities. So luckily not everybody is set on extracting the maximum amount of money out of customers at all cost.
Believe it or not, but there are people that chose a job not because they needed the money, but because they like the job. Those people will usually accommodate special requests if they do not deem it to have a negative effect on their products or services. So in turn I'm generally also fine with someone refusing to accomodate special requests that go beyond what they usually offer because they do not approve of it for some reason. (Independently of wether I share the undelying opinion.) It's not like they refused to sell some standard product or service to a specific group of people for some obscure reason unrelated to the product or service itself. That would be a different story.
Like I replied to Foreigner, it's perfectly acceptable to deny any request. What I don't think is necessary is being mean about it and it's a backwards way to think that their preference is plain wrong.
I think there's a healthy middle ground somewhere. I don't enjoy the fact that you have to fight for customer service sometimes in France, but I also think the other extreme of capitulating to customers' every whims and being abused or punished for not doing so isn't great either. I don't have enough context from the above exchange to judge one way or another, just wanted to share a funny saying I heard.
Edit: also someone who hates coriander with the fire of a thousand burning suns, I can't disagree with your point about restaurants needing to make some concessions. Sometimes it's just not possible to change a dish though, and I have to accept it or choose something else on the menu.
Totally! But I'd file that under (too big of an) inconvenience instead of "wrong". I think it's totally fine to deny any request, just don't be an ass about it.
At the end of the day it's about communication and expressing snobby superiority over your customer isn't a nice way to present yourself. Unless the place is looking for that snobby vibe, I suppose.
And I get that sometimes the service staff is just having a bad day or there's so much custom orders outside the menu that it's just easier to say 'no, you're wrong'. Still not a great experience for the customer I bet but I can sympathize.
Oh we don't disagree on that, but if stroppy waiters are some you'd like to avoid, I'd recommend avoiding Paris, especially the very touristy areas!
I do agree with you regarding the cultural inflexibility. The one thing I'd add is that just because a cafe has ingredients for a dish, doesn't mean they can easily sell it. Is there an entry in the POS to ring it up, or appropriate ala carte options, etc.
But if they did have everything setup, such as if they sold other sandwiches ad hoc, and they are effectively refusing a simple substitution of bread, then that seems silly. On the other end, asking for substitutions in delicate or pre-set courses without prior warning to the kitchen with your reservation is a bit much.
The American attitudes rightly get a lot of flack, but the old saying "the customer is always right" originally continued "in manners of taste." And I don't really see the problem with that, where it's possible to easily accommodate.
You're absolutely right. My original comment probably came off a bit like the customer is entitled to have their request filled no matter what. I meant that the customer is entitled to be treated with respect and their personal preferences are valid, even if they're out of the norm.
And of course the restaurant doesn't have to fulfill anyone's wishes, no matter if they can't just bother or whatever, but it doesn't make sense to treat customers like second class citizens either.
No worries, I didn't read it as the customer deserves every request fulfilled. And I very much agree with your overall sentiment. I've just been around enough businesses to know that just because something seems simple to the customer, doesn't mean the cafe has the ability to sell it to you, e.g., has it costed out, etc. so I wanted to touch on that.
Have a great day!
Yeah, that's a valuable observation to share.
Great day to you too!
While I agree with the sentiment of your comment, and respect the decision to not accommodate any special requests regarding croissaints by the café owner, I conversely find it funny how some people get outraged that people have the odacity to take croissaints, change them, and sell them in their own businesses, given that historically the croissaint's origin was also just an Austrian pastry of the same shape that's been exported to France and changed a bit.
I might be too old and curmudgeonly, but after trying similar variations on the theme of croissant (in Tokyo though, not in Paris), I still prefer the classic buttery flaky goodness of the traditional version. One variation I did love dearly were croissants made with sourdough, but the bakery that made them closed down - clearly my tastes don't align with the general populace.
Having said that, it's good to see people experimenting - I don't think crookies and such ever fully replace traditional croissants, so I'll still be able to have the classics,while others can be more adventurous :)
I agree with you. I also don’t care for pains au chocolate, nor its inferior clone chocolatines.
Even putting sugar on top of a croissant subtly ruins it for me. A croissant should basically be a yeasty flakey butter delivery device.
Total opposite for me. Don't get me wrong, I will happily devour a traditional croissant any day of the week, but nothing beats an almond croissant, IMO. And my other favorite from our local bakery is a spinach and feta one.
I will make exceptions for almond croissants. They’re still not as good as a traditional one, but it’s pretty good.
“Chocolatine” is strictly the same as “pain au chocolat”. It’s just a different name for the same thing in a different part of France.
I know, it was just a joke.
Ooooh them's fightin' words!
I grew up in New Hampshire and remember croissants getting fashionable in the early 1980s and I absolutely hated them.
Even though my dad's family came from Québec I didn't actually go to Montreal until years later (maybe a good thing because a Québécois with my first & last name was a notorious motorcycle assassin in the 1980s) and then... It was so good I'll have croissants whenever I go there.
That's a great point actually - good croissants are amazing, but you can't half-ass them I think - it makes them underwhelming and totally pointless, might as well just try some bread or buns or whatever.
A good, fresh croissant in the morning though, either on its own or with some savory toppings (canned tuna and lettuce is my personal favorite) is simply divine. I'm lucky that Tokyo has some good bakeries where I can get them once in a while, because a lot of "bread" (quotation marks intentional) sold in Japan is just not good at all.
I think 5 years of broke student living has conditioned me to love the cheap 10-pack croissants from the local grocery chain. And it's weird reading this article because we'd use them to make culinary abominations, with the understanding that any self respecting Frenchman would be preping the guillotine if they knew what we did. Coffee flavored bread pudding with stale croissants, scrambled egg stuffing, improvised croissants smores. Feels like the type of novelties that would get 15min of fame now days.
At the start of the pandemic, we were eating a ton of croissants.
We live just outside a tourist town, and so while there were massive shortages of all the staples in the supermarket, restaurant suppliers desperate to stay in business started selling boxes of cheap, high-quality bulk food to the general public. And so restaurant-style croissants became a household staple for us, because it was the only bread-adjacent product we could get our hands on (we couldn't even get flour). We were using them for egg sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, burger buns, etc., etc.
I have very fond memories of it all and developed a much greater appreciation for the versatile croissant than I ever had previously. I don't think I will have an experience quite like that ever again. (My guilty secret is that I actually really loved the lockdowns. It felt novel, even a little magical, like being a kid experiencing my first blizzard all over again.)
Some of the local restaurants in my town roughly did the same thing at the start of the pandemic with conjunction with the local business organization that is ran by my city. What they did is that the restaurants would sell their food to the organization and that organization would give that good out to anyone that wanted it. It was fun to get a whole small pizza from a local pizzeria on one week and decent Chinese food on another.
And what you were describing sounds like a good way to support local restaurants during the pandemic. And croissant egg sandwiches are amazing.
When I had my first croissant after moving to Europe from the US, I was absolutely floores by how much better it was than any croissant I'd had in the states -- and it was from a chain in a train station in east Germany. Croissants in at least mainland Europe are a different species altogether from what you get most places in the US.
Donuts were way better (and easier to find) back home though. And don't get me started on how hard it is to find bagels here -- even bad ones.
Of all places, Northern Michigan has a couple of bakeries that turn out exceptional croissants, so flaky that you have to dust yourself after consuming them. But there's also a Filipino family bakery making unusual variations - exquisite croissant suprême pastry rolled into a cylinder, sliced, and baked as circles showing the perfect lamination, fillings like ube (purple yam) paste, and so on. I'm open to both whatever creative bakers can offer and the glorious traditional version.
If you're referring to who I think you are, I don't think you had too much to worry about. Both are pretty common first and last names in Quebec. And unless like him you also happened to look like a biker version of Charles Manson I don't think you ever would have been mistaken for him. :P
I’m thinking of all the different ways “motorcycle” and “assassin” could be being used here, and I gotta know lol
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Biker_War
My favorite bakery doesn't make the perfect classical version of any one particular pastry, but they try variations on a weekly basis, so you get all sorts of fun and interesting combinations. I do like the classics, and know where to go if I'm looking for a perfectly executed classic croissant. But on a day in, day out basis, I like the excitement of variety, even if not every combo is a home run.
Im 90% with you in preferring a classic, ungarnished, croissant (and am not a fan of croissants au chocolat or amandes).
My one exception is abricotines (croissant pastrie, filled with custard and apricots). They arent common, at least around me, so it's a real treat when I stumble across one.
Come on, that’s just a danish at that point. 😀
These all look and sound delicious. Maybe bakeries are upping their game and extending their reach to compete with Krispy Kreme's unexpected popularity in France!
This has been a trend in Paris loooong before Krispy Kreme came to town. Bo & Mie is a well known example of a bakery here that's been making "instagram-able" pastries for years. I think social media has had some influence as bakeries need to compete with each other (especially when it comes to attracting tourists) and sharing pictures of pretty/quirky pastries online has been one way to do it.
Edit: I also wouldn't read too much into Krispy Kreme's popularity. When Burger King opened up again here, there were also massive queues in the beginning. Once they opened more places, it became no more interesting than other fast food restaurants.
Interesting, here, where I live we have a quite popular croissant franchise cafe with different burger-like croissants: fish, fried chicken, with hamburger, cheese, salad, tomato, etc. etc. For few years I believe.. like 4 or 5.