One of the Best Bakeries in Park Slope Is Breadivore | Eater NY
"A bakery in Brooklyn’s South Slope is riffing on the traditional Chinatown egg tart, evolving it into a croissant-based egg cup: baskets of thinly layered croissant dough filled with egg, ricotta, Parmesan, and garlic chive (listed on the menu as the egg cup, $7.50). “Four basic ingredients, it’s really that simple,” says owner Cixiu Gao. Crispy ridgelines of pastry hold the deep comforts of ricotta and a perfect gratin top, with garlic chive that adds a slight kick; the result looks like a quiche or a frittata. Gao emphasizes quality ingredients — including freshly milled flour from upstate New York — because “I don’t want to serve people fake things.” That principle stems from her kitchen years at Per Se and the now-shuttered Bouchon Bakery, where she gleaned “some really serious classic baking” before the pandemic, and from training at the International Culinary Center (class of 2017) after a background in biology helped her master yeast metabolism and fermentation. Bread is central: a slow 24-hour fermentation sourdough sold in four varieties — plain, seeds, gruyere, figs and walnut ($8–$11) — and the shop’s name was chosen because “I eat bread, you eat bread, everybody eats bread.” Gao also adapts northern Chinese flavors into French pastry techniques: she transformed her mother’s yuanxiao (glutinous rice balls stuffed with black sesame) into a black sesame twist that uses sweet osmanthus two ways — mixed into the filling in syrup form, and as a gel piped in after baking — producing a swirl of orange and black that she calls “the cinnamon roll’s cousin.” A memory of purple radish and white pepper puffs from Shanghai inspired a grated, cooked, and seasoned purple-radish scone made with Parmesan that was a pop-up bestseller. Leaning into northern Chinese (Gao’s mother is ethnically Manchu) ingredients makes the offerings distinct from the milder, sweeter Cantonese bakeries around the city and places the shop alongside other heritage-forward bakers such as Là Lá Bakeshop, Bánh by Lauren, and Lady Wong. Operationally, Gao has faced typical small-business headaches — staffing, marketing, and social media — and only recently added an espresso machine at customers’ insistence (it arrived “lurking in its giant box” on the day of the interview). She continues to experiment (contemplating a pig-in-a-blanket that swaps sausage and cheese for a family pork-and-chive-dumpling filling) and aims to comfort: “I wanted to create something cheerful and relaxing,” Gao says. “No one really needs sugar or baked goods unless they make you feel better or are a placebo that makes you less stressed out.”" - Richard Whiddington
