Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
I have been a restaurant critic and food writer for more than a decade, and began my career as an inspector for the Michelin Guides in North America. While training for that job, I learned about the importance of relativity, which is the idea that critiquing a meal in isolation is an incomplete analysis.
The better critique comes from comparisons, whenever they are possible. It’s a lesson that I use often in my work and one that was especially helpful in reporting a recent article for The New York Times on the best croissants in New York City.
This spring, Nikita Richardson, an editor for the Food section, emailed me, asking if I’d like to write the article. Thanks to my work on Sweet City, a newsletter I recently started that covers bakeries, restaurant desserts and pastry trends in New York City, I had a robust knowledge of baked goods across the city.
Still, considering New York’s surplus of French bakeries and the croissant craze sweeping the city, my work was cut out for me. After narrowing down a potential list of places to scout, I settled on 114 bakeries and restaurants, and subsequently hit the road.
There were different approaches I could take, but I chose to break my list up by neighborhood. In a sprawling city like New York, it was the most time-efficient way to go about the task.
I’m not a native New Yorker — I was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hong Kong — but I have made this city my home, hopefully for life. Walking through various neighborhoods reminded me of the dynamism that draws people from all over the world to this city.
On one day of croissant-hunting, I hopped from bakery to bakery, starting in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and ending nearby in Bushwick. The shift between the two was palpable: Hip-hop from passing cars gave way to salsa music and street vendors selling quick and inexpensive meals. Each bakery I visited was a hub of community within its neighborhood.
During my month of reporting, I tried to scout earlier in the day to avoid getting stuck with the end-of-day croissant dregs. That meant dropping my daughter off at the school bus stop and then joining all manners of sleepy, daily commuters on the train, bus and ferry.
Still, the key to being a successful food journalist is to approach the work as I would any other job — with discipline, organization and integrity.
I showed up to each bakery unannounced, waiting in line with everyone else. I always opted for butter croissants, though on occasion I also tried more creative takes — especially when there was a quantifiable buzz around a specialty pastry, like a croissant-donut hybrid. That’s how I ended up tasting more than 200 different croissants. I still can’t believe that number myself.
Even with all my advanced planning, roadblocks did come up. Some bakeries were sold out of croissants. Others were closed for last-minute repairs, or had ceased to exist entirely. I learned, after one rainy day in May, that croissants do not hold up very well in humid conditions.
Since I work from home, that’s where I would unpack my haul and set up a tasting. Ultimately, I was looking for flavor, which is harder to find than it seems. Most croissants are crisp and buttery, but when you juxtapose a mass-produced one with something more artisanal — say, a croissant made with a sourdough starter and cold fermented over a few days — you get a depth of flavor that becomes your benchmark.
There were plenty of croissants with picture-perfect honeycomb interiors that didn’t taste of anything. There were others that were either dried out or greasy. In the end, my criteria were technical proficiency, nuanced flavor and a sense of wonder — that gut feeling you get when you’ve just eaten something amazing.
Over the years, I’ve learned that nothing brings back my taste memory better than a photograph. So I took pictures, slicing open each croissant to examine the lamination. I took notes with takeaways like “pretty but empty” and “toasted bread.”
It all sounds a bit serious for an innocuous roundup of pastries, but bakers pour an immense amount of time and effort into their products, so it was important to me to be as fair and precise as possible.
For us restaurant critics, scouting and eating is just half the job. After that comes the daunting task of translating an experience into words in a way that is relatable and useful. I ended up with a list of 21 excellent croissants; the most formidable challenge was simply coming up with new ways to say “buttery.” Luckily, the photographer Heather Willensky did an incredible job of capturing the essence of each pastry.
I may not want to eat another croissant for a while, but I’ll happily eat with my eyes for days to come.
The post A Reporter’s Methodical Quest to Find New York’s Best Croissants appeared first on New York Times.
