Mille-feuille Review: Mille-Feuille has buttery croissants
My very first digital camera was purchased online sometime around 2003? It featured 3 megapixels and it was from FujiFilm. I must have read like fifty reviews just to make sure it was a good deal, and finally purchased it from Gateway. Remember them? They used to compete with Dell, and they had boxes painted like dairy cows. The best part of the camera was that they messed up on shipping and gave me two cameras. Sold one to a friend and made some extra pocket change. With that little point-and-shoot, New York City looked really cool to me. Everything was novel. I took pictures of everything. Luckily, my laptop harddrive died in 2004/5 and I don’t ever back up data. Pictures of everything is nice because every day something happens and then it just goes away. Your mind doesn’t have enough space to keep all the memories all the time. (That’s why video is awesome, but that’s for another day). The other day I walked out of my apartment to go to work. Someone stopped me with, “Hey mister, excuse me.”
“Can you spare something? I need to get cereal for my 5-month-old daughter.” He said. I really dislike when someone on the street ask for money. Then I’m a dick for not giving anything, but at the same time, it’s something that you normally just forget about days later because quite frankly this happens ALL THE TIME in NYC. I turned to looked at him and said, “I’m sorry.” and walked away eating a dry baguette. Maybe 5-month-old kids don’t eat cereal (pretty sure they don’t, unless he said 5-years-old and I mis-heard him), but this man had desperation in his eyes. Like he wasn’t lying about this. I’m a dick. Can’t help it. This is the kind of things I normally forget about if not for cameras or blogging. Blogging is also good for keeping memories of French bakery goods.
The goods you see in these pictures are from Mille Feuille in the West Village. A place like this probably would have been awesome when I was at NYU, because it’s so close to ‘campus’. The prices might not be student friendly, although it’s on-par with most French bakeries in NYC. The madeleine ($1) was a miss. The cashier who was working on them told us that it’s like corn bread filled with honey. First of all, madeleine cookies are not supposed to be like corn bread. It’s supposed to be more like cake. There it was though, tasting like corn bread and betraying authenticity. I love corn bread, but ask me to buy corn bread and let me make a decision. Don’t tell me it’s a madeleine.
The macaron ($1.90) was priced well compared to other macarons in the city. They had a good variety, and the macarons looked in all different sizes, which made me think perhaps they were handmade. By the way, if you didn’t know this, there are macaron machines. Yes, all the stores that sell large volumes of macarons probably hire folks south of the border to learn how to use the macaron machine. Imagine that! But at Mille Feuille they looked to be handmade because of the various shapes of the cookies and inconsistent filling. The cashier gave us a pistachio macaron that had a fair amount of filling, so I was happy. It was quite average, although for the price I kind of love it. Despite the weird value proposition, I would probably buy these macarons again.
Steph and I usually do the chocolate croissant + croissant order, because that’s how you test out two of the most important items in a French bakery. They ran out of the chocolate variety by mid-day (when we went), so we just got the regular croissant ($2.25?) and an almond croissant ($2.75?). The regular croissant was good. Buttery and flaky, I easily could have had another. It made me wish the chocolate one was available, because if they can do a good croissant, perhaps adding chocolate makes it even better.
Almond croissant was good too. One just has to note that it’s an entirely different beast from a good croissant or chocolate croissant. I’ve never had an almond croissant that’s airy and flaky. They’re always flat. Like the almond paste filling makes it impossible to poof up like its tastier cousins. Think of almond croissants more like a dessert, and you’ll be fine.
Mille Feuille is probably a gem for the neighborhood. It may not be a destination bakery and it might not even beat Patisserie Claude. After all, Claude’s has some of the best chocolate croissants in the entire city. However, since we can never have too many places with good pastries, I welcome the addition of Mille Feuille to the French Bakery landscape of NY.
Mille-feuille552 Laguardia Pl.New York, NY 10012212-533-4698
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