One Hype Bakery, Hold the Lines
Friday was opening day at Birdee, the latest and arguably most pedigreed of the city’s hype bakeries: Located on the ground floor of the building officially dubbed the Refinery at Domino, but which everyone calls the Domino Sugar building, on the manicured Williamsburg Riviera, Birdee comes from Kent Hospitality Group and pastry chef Renata Ameni (the bakery’s name is a translation of her childhood nickname). Bracing for a crowd, I decided to stop by late in the morning, hoping to optimize my arrival to try some morning pastries as well as heartier options that would come out after a switchover to lunch service. There were a few content creators milling around when I arrived and a small selection of pastry. We waited for lunch by ordering one of each remaining baked good: olive-oil cake, buttery chocolate alfajores, and a Rice Krispies treat speckled with brown butter.
Line or not, Birdee is indisputably hype. It’s one of the last projects chef James Kent worked on before his death. He entrusted it to Ameni, who worked at Eleven Madison Park before opening Crown Shy alongside Kent. Her Brazilian heritage is the source of the alfajores and the forthcoming pão de queijo, but early whispers about the bakery have — perhaps predictably — instead focused on croissants in promised flavors such as praline and pepperoni pizza.
At noon, a line started to form of a half-dozen people waiting for the sandwiches to drop. First-day hiccups were obvious, if not unexpected. A tuna croissant had been eighty-sixed, and a grain bowl I’d ordered “didn’t work out.” I saw the influencers take their second round of footage while I waited almost an hour for my order. (A dark and salty banana bread that came out helped ease the wait). When the food did show up, my friend and I were happy with the looks of the Italian dip with delicately diced giardiniera that came on a pretzel bun hearty enough to withstand a thorough dunk in its sidecar of jus. Similarly, all the elements of a breaded-chicken–harissa–Caesar sandwich on focaccia were delicious.
I wanted to give Birdee a fair shake, so I went back on Sunday morning. Arriving just before 10 a.m., I was early enough to nab a pain au chocolat but too late for the churro croissants Birdee had posted on its Instagram Story. There weren’t as many influencers in the crowd, but most of the 45 seats were full and at least five dogs were in the room at any given time.
I ordered a box of pastries, a garlic-knot pretzel, and a breakfast sandwich that showed up before the iced tea, looking properly majestic on an airy, glossy, nearly spherical brioche bun filled with egg and cheese and a generous placement of thick-cut bacon that was slightly blackened at the extremities. That sandwich is served with a side of smoky red-pepper purée that’s worth slathering on in its entirety. I was a little confused by the garlic-knot pretzel, which is topped with a sprinkling of grated cheese and conjures slice nostalgia. But the garlic flavor is more muted, calibrated to suit the pastry and never covering up the sweet butter in the twisty pretzel dough. (Perhaps this is the right intensity level for people who might eat one before heading off to a meeting in the building’s upstairs office space.)
Ameni has a way with exteriors, adding extra layers of deliciousness to the outside of her pastries: A Gruyère biscuit is listed as having hot honey, but the real zing comes from an extra sprinkle of red pepper and salt crystals around the craggy bread. The streusel crust on a muffin dotted with potent dried blueberries sinks deeper than expected, becoming one with the entire muffin top, emitting just a whisper of cinnamon under your nose.
The lines were barely worth mentioning, more what you’d find at a busy coffee shop than at any of the other croissant purveyors whose queues stretch up and down the city’s streets. A future ice-cream station on the southern side of the room will certainly draw crowds once it opens and begins selling the torched-Creamsicle sundaes Ameni invented at Crown Shy. But for the moment, Birdee is still somewhat subdued. It’s also very, very new, and I have to agree with the woman wearing head-to-toe black-leather Prada at the table next to me on Sunday morning: “There’s a lot of stuff they have to figure out.”