16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Reporter's Methodical Quest to Find New York's Best Croissants
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I have been a restaurant critic and food writer for more than a decade, and began my career as an inspector for the Michelin Guides in North America. While training for that job, I learned about the importance of relativity, which is the idea that critiquing a meal in isolation is an incomplete analysis.
The better critique comes from comparisons, whenever they are possible. It's a lesson that I use often in my work and one that was especially helpful in reporting a recent article for The New York Times on the best croissants in New York City.
This spring, Nikita Richardson, an editor for the Food section, emailed me, asking if I'd like to write the article. Thanks to my work on Sweet City, a newsletter I recently started that covers bakeries, restaurant desserts and pastry trends in New York City, I had a robust knowledge of baked goods across the city.
Still, considering New York's surplus of French bakeries and the croissant craze sweeping the city, my work was cut out for me. After narrowing down a potential list of places to scout, I settled on 114 bakeries and restaurants, and subsequently hit the road.
There were different approaches I could take, but I chose to break my list up by neighborhood. In a sprawling city like New York, it was the most time-efficient way to go about the task.
I'm not a native New Yorker — I was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hong Kong — but I have made this city my home, hopefully for life. Walking through various neighborhoods reminded me of the dynamism that draws people from all over the world to this city.
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