Aux Merveilleux de Fred
Bakery · West Village ·
French pâtisserie with signature meringues, croissants, and brioches
French pâtisserie with signature meringues, croissants, and brioches
"The croissants at the New York location of the French dessert chain Aux Merveilleux de Fred are baked periodically during the day, so you may get a warm one. They are compact and crescent-shaped, extremely buttery, and done to a perfect shade of reddish brown. There’s this location in the West Village and two others in Midtown and Upper East Side." - Robert Sietsema
"Because they bake croissants periodically during the day I sometimes get a warm one; they’re compact and armchair-shaped but extremely buttery, done to a perfect reddish-brown, and I rate them among the best in the city." - Robert Sietsema
"Fabricating frosting‑covered snowballs of meringue and also producing some excellent brioches in various shapes — often involving lots of chocolate — Aux Merveilleux de Fred is a frankly bizarre but tempting stop (a line forms Sunday morning)." - Robert Sietsema
"The specialty at this French-born Greenwich Village cake shop is Merveilleux, small cakes made up of two light meringues welded together with whipped cream and dusted with chocolate shavings which originated in Belgium and found their way to France. Individual merveilleux in flavors like coffee, cherry whipped cream, and almond and hazelnut praline are available for $7.80; boxes of 6 to 16 run from $21 to $56 on Seamless. Other offerings include delicate, Northern French-style waffles, mini meringues, and brioches." - Leah Rosenzweig
"I recently stumbled on the Nutella brioche ($3.20) at West Village bakery Aux Merveilleux de Fred, which is known for its namesake merveilleux—balls of flavored whipped cream coated with nuts, meringue, or other crunchy coatings—and also dabbles in croissants and brioches. The Nutella brioche is split and spread with Nutella; it sure looks like a sandwich, and I can even make a case for Nutella being a cognate of peanut butter. I was ready to praise it with faint damnation until I found the ganache brioche ($3.35), smeared with what amounts to chocolate frosting—really, not savory one tiny bit—but it’s so damn good that I’m willing to call it a sandwich too; eat a pair for lunch and savory be damned." - Robert Sietsema
