"CAR in Old Town Pasadena is best known for chocolate croissants, but the butter croissants are worth refilling your statin prescription, too. Here they’ve mastered the art of visually stimulating, lighter-than-air pastries that don’t make you feel like butter is seeping out your pores. The golden-brown shell offers 1/100th of a second of crunchy resistance, then gives way with a shower of crumbs. The wispy white innards look like a Fibonacci spiral and have a slight tang that’s delicious on its own, and even better set against their housemade dark chocolate." - sylvio martins, garrett snyder, brant cox