The Little Blue Owl Baking Company
Pastry shop · Penn Valley ·
French bakery offering croissants, eclairs, cakes, and tarts
French bakery offering croissants, eclairs, cakes, and tarts
"Narberth is a quaint little town without much of a food scene to speak of. But Little Blue Owl is the real deal—a French bakery that’ll have you singing the praises of its croissants, Beauty & The Beast-style as you drive down Haverford Ave. Except for a few outdoor tables, it’s takeout only, so pop in to make your morning commute more palatable or to fuel your weekend errands. The best bites here are anything using buttery Viennoiserie (flaky laminated dough) like the chocolate almond croissant (why choose between chocolate or almond when the obvious answer is and), and the “dough knot,” a croissant dough over-stuffed with caramel. The unassuming kouign amann would make Paul Hollywood proud—it adds extra butter and sugar between the layers of buttery croissant dough to be richer than rich.Compensate with a black coffee (they offer both Herman’s and La Colombe) to offset the sweetness. Little Blue Owl doesn’t offer much in the savory category, but the pastrami croissant with sauerkraut and swiss cheese will scratch your breakfast sandwich itch. Add a few of the top-tier canneles to your order for snacking later. photo credit: Nicole Guglielmo photo credit: Nicole Guglielmo photo credit: Nicole Guglielmo photo credit: Nicole Guglielmo Pause Unmute" - Jonathan Deutsch
"When it opened in 2006 I found that Little Owl had already reshaped the neighborhood-bistro template by shifting focus from exclusively French fare to seafood, salads and occasional Asian and Italian flourishes, and it carried pop-culture luster from being in the building that contained the Friends apartment and launching Gabriel Stulman’s career. The room that once had a quaint 30-seat dining area (with the eponymous plastic owl visible in an adjacent eave) now radiated with multiple outdoor sidewalk tables and heated dining structures, and on a frigid weeknight the place was jammed. The famous pork chop ($36) arrived bone-protruding and cross-hatched from the grill on a bed of greens over butter beans; it was perfectly pink, soft and slightly chewy with the texture of a well-marbled steak and faint notes of cumin and curry that only amplified its porkiness — the taste as good as I remembered, though the price was exactly $10 more. Small plates remain central: tuna ponzu ($19) replaces the older seared hamachi, there’s grilled octopus among the starters, and we chose a brilliantly orange lobster bisque dotted with chives but stingy on crustacean. The mushroom risotto came loaded with wild mushrooms and a wiggling raw egg yolk and smelled faintly of truffle oil; the Seasonal Vegetable section (new since the original menu) includes a very agreeable skin-on delicata squash with apple and toasted pumpkin seeds ($15), while the french fries ($9) were crisp outside and fluffy inside. Large, shareable entrees like the ultra-shareable pork chop and a skate sandwich (two layers of breaded, fried ray on a modest roll with a haystack of slaw and fries) encourage grazing and carb-loading. We finished with desserts — a carrot cake crowned by a lighter-than-usual cream cheese frosting and a rolled apple strudel dusted with confectioner’s sugar and served with vanilla ice cream — and left shivering but agreed the food was every bit as good as we remembered, perhaps a tad better." - Robert Sietsema
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