Our spaniel barks when we tie him up outside shops. Our Lab mutt sometimes chews through her leash. Because of this, I rarely wait in the long weekend line that stands between me and my favorite pastry. I lucked out this afternoon. We walked by Cafe Besalu a bit after closing time. They were still selling pastries, and somehow they hadn’t run out of the almond croissants that usually disappear by noon. So I got one. This led to me standing outside Besalu, eating my first almond croissant in months and hearing my son giggle as he asked, “Dad, why are you groaning?” My giddy taste buds reminded me that I’ve been meaning to repost something I wrote about Besalu back when I had a photography show there in 2007. It used to be online, but it preceded this blog and vanished when I switched to a new ISP. I felt bad about that since Besalu’s owner, James Miller, once told me that my words popped up pretty high in Google searches. Besalu has great reviews from the NYT and many other sites and publications. James doesn’t need my help. But I’m pleased to put my appreciation on the record again and push back a bit against the online grievances of those who resent paying anything more than Egg McMuffin prices for handmade pastry.
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Here’s my pretentious little story about how good Besalu’s pastries are. I lived in Paris for a year when I was a kid. Around the corner from my elementary school, there was a pastry shop that had the good sense to pull a batch of pain au chocolat from its oven just in time for the end of the school day. You had to be careful to let them cool slightly because the chocolate inside was still molten. They were very very very tasty.
Now, by the time I moved to Ballard in 2001, I’d had pain au chocolat plenty of times since that year in Paris. But I didn’t give them much thought. They were simply food. So I got caught totally flat-footed the first time I walked into Besalu and ordered a pain au chocolat. With the first taste, I was right back to being nine years old, walking down a sidewalk in Montparnasse, switching a pastry from hand to hand to keep from burning myself. Never before or since has a taste freed something so vivid from my memory.
Best of all, though, is that all Besalu’s pastries are made by hand right before your eyes. James and his crew work as hard as just about anyone I know.
