This Beloved Bakery Is Closing Its LA Location for Good
Sorry, Los Angeles! The city's options for intricate fried pastries has just gotten a bit smaller now that Dominique Ansel, a James Beard award-winning pastry chef and the original inventor of The Cronut, closed up his Los Angeles bakery for good.
After opening up three years earlier, Dominique Ansel Bakery (as well as his restaurant, 189) is closing up shop due to the pandemic. This is following an announcement that celebrity chef Curtis Stone plans to open the restaurant Picnic Society in the Grove, which expands into the space where 189 and Dominique Ansel Bakery are, according to Eater Los Angeles.
"During the pandemic, we've had to make some tough choices and also had to make peace with not having a choice sometimes," wrote Ansel in a recent social media post. "We now join the list of COVID casualties, alongside our well-respected peers in the industry. It's ironic to close when our last memories were of the lines every weekend and nights full of proposals, tree lightings, and blow out finale parties."
While this is quite the blow for lovers of the original Cronut in Los Angeles, this isn't goodbye forever. Dominique Ansel still has a New York City location open, but unfortunately had to close the location in London as well.
"LA wasn't always easy, as we set our bar as high as we could reach, but it was always exciting. And of all the things I'll miss, most of all I'll miss our team," wrote Ansel. "A group of co-dreamers—who believed in what we did and put in the work to make it come true. And come winter in NY, I guess I'll miss the sunshine a bit as well."
The news of these closings may seem bleak, but the bakery in NYC seems to be as busy as ever. According to the website, Dominique Ansel Bakery is taking orders for their September Cronut flavor, which includes Pumpkin & Rice Pudding. His location in SoHo (a neighborhood in Manhattan) is offering takeout and delivery and recently opened up their outdoor garden for dine-in customers. The location in the West Village is also temporarily closed.
Although Dominique Ansel Bakery offers numerous sweet treats, The Cronut is one of their most popular. It's a half donut, half croissant, typically filled with some kind of flavoring and topped with colorful frosting. In normal circumstances, Dominique Ansel Bakery will have wait lines up to two hours right outside of their shop. The Cronut's original creation was launched in May 2013 and was even named one of TIME Magazine's best inventions of the year.
Dominique Ansel is also the mastermind behind numerous other Instagram-worthy desserts including Chocolate Chip Cookie Shots (a chocolate chip cookie shaped like a shot glass, then filled with cold-infused Tahitian vanilla milk) and the Blooming Hot Chocolate—a rich hot chocolate with a marshmallow flower that "blossoms" when it comes in contact with heat. The original Blooming Hot Chocolate was introduced in their Tokyo shop, which did shut down pre-COVID.
In his final remarks on his post, Ansel does hope that he can leave Los Angeles with a "see you soon." Could this mean hopefully more cronuts in LA's future? Only time will tell. For now, you can drool over the pastries featured in The Best Bakery In Every State.
