Breads Bakery

The myth of overnight success implores us to ignore all the secret toiling and struggles of our suddenly favorite celebrities. Perhaps, as a mode of marketing and myth-making, wisely so.

Consider Breads Bakery.

Viewed within the frame of overnight success, Breads’ existence hints that somewhere, someone spent the duration of 2013 in a basement, caked with cake, perfecting the following items:

Baguettes
Rugelah
Tuna Sandwiches
Gouda Cheese straws
Challah
Babka
Poppy Seed Danishes
Almond croissants
Babka
Babka
And most assuredly, babka

Add to that bizarre list a zillion other items, both seasonal and seemingly on a whim, and you’ve start to get an idea of what this place offers.  The web site belies precious little info, as if to say, “We just get it, nothing to see here.”

Nominally Israeli and entirely delightful, they do everything right (except chocolate chip cookies. Wander up to 18th to City Bakery for those). The babka is roundly and rightfully acclaimed. The lunch options, from smoked salmon sandwiches to some stunning cauliflower fritters, provide some of the best in Union Square.

A humble brie and olive with a few strands of lettuce
in a tiny semolina baguette. Perfect. With soup? Why not?

Grab a baguette, knock on the bottom.

The marzipan honey appears mostly during Fall and
could turn your belt into a suddenly desirable snack.

Knock on the rigid underside of one of their baguettes and enjoy the loaf’s uncanny impression of that baguette from Ratatouille where Colette says, “Only great bread makes this sound!”

The joint leaves us breathless. And fat. Try it, try it all and see for yourself. But when you find yourself, during an inevitable cleanse, back in the gluten-free aisle of Whole Foods, angrily trying to explain to the celiac hordes what you saw outside of the cave, don’t blame us.