On 11 a.m. last Thursday, they were already lined up along Lafayette Street eagerly awaiting the noon hour when the sweet treat du jour would become available. “I’ve missed these croissants like three times now, and I’m not today,” someone in the crowd murmured.
Move over cronuts — Dominique Ansel‘s phenomenally popular donut-croissant hybrid that first debuted in 2013 — there’s a new flaky pastry that New Yorkers are hungrily lining up for: Meet the Suprême.
This past April, Lafayette Grand Café and Bakery in Noho started selling the superlative baked good — a unique circular croissant filled with pastry crème and topped with ganache and crushed up cookies. The treats have since gone viral, with posts on TikTok and Instagram attracting hundreds of thousands of views and leading people to line up for an hour to get their hands on one of the $8.50 goodies.
They’re “incredible,” food blogger Mike Chau gushed on Instagram. They’re “one of the only things that really deserves the insane attention [they’re] getting from viral TikToks.”
The bakery currently makes 240 Suprêmes daily and sells them in two “drops” — lingo typically reserved for the distribution of must-have streetwear — each day, one at 8 a.m. and one at noon. Suprêmes come in two flavors: chocolate and a rotating flavor of the month — such as pistachio, rose berry spritz, and, currently, peaches n’ crème.
Pastry chef Scott Cioe said unseating the cronut was never his goal with the buttery treat.
“Much respect to Dominique Ansel,” he told The Post, “but it was just to make something delicious.”
But, he did create the Suprême with an eye towards both popularity and deliciousness, taking notes from traditional croissants, donuts and eclairs.
“Visuals are really important in retail bakeries,” he said. “We knew we were gonna fill it almost like a doughnut. So we wanted it to be thin.”
The circular pastry is just 1.5-inch thick, which gives it lots of crispy surface area and allows it to sit out and retain its crunch, even if it sits out for hours — not that they’re sitting in the Lafayette pastry case for long.
The bakery typically sells out within 45 minutes of each drop, despite a limit that allows only one Suprême per customer.
Lafayette manager Michael Brown keeps the waiting masses hydrated, handing out water and fresh house-made watermelon lemonade to the line.
Sharon Li, 18, and her boyfriend recently waited 40 minutes to get a midday Suprême. It was delicious, but she’s unsure if the hassle and price tag were worth it.
“It’s really good, but I do think it’s overhyped and I wouldn’t pay this much for one again,” she said.
John Kuehn, a 46-year-old food blogger from Noho, also wasn’t certain he’d shell out $8.50 again. He said, nearly every coffee shop in the city makes “really good homemade croissants for a cheaper price.”
Still, he noted it was delicious and it’s certainly the reigning pastry of the moment.
Right now, he said “You don’t see lines like this at Dominique Ansel’s.”
