Breadivore Bakery
Bakery · South Slope
500A 5th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Highlights
Artisan bakery with Chinese-European fusion pastries & sourdough
Artisan bakery with Chinese-European fusion pastries & sourdough
"If you had to eat a cinnamon roll every day for the rest of your life, might we recommend the one at Breadivore in Park Slope? The cinnamon and cardamom roll here is made with a sticky laminated dough and topped with big white knobs of sugar. It’s a little more subdued than some of the others on this list, but it’s still a treat." - willa moore, molly fitzpatrick, bryan kim, will hartman
"As advertised, Breadivore smells strongly and sweetly of bread products the moment you step inside. The South Slope bakery is a small but mighty operation, with a bell at the cash register, which you can ring if the people who own this place are busy in the back. Every bakery needs an internet ambassador, and Breadivore’s is the egg cup. It’s a laminated pastry—inspired equally by egg tarts and alt-croissants—that’s filled with a smooth mix of ricotta, yolk, funky garlic chive and parmesan. Get that, but also get Breadivore’s cinnamon and cardamom roll with sticky laminated dough and big white knobs of sugar. A loaf of the Bordelaise bread, studded with gruyere and herbs, is great for making sandwiches later. Or just to snack on all day, one thick, soft slice at a time." - Willa Moore
"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
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