French Bakery in Queens: Cannelle Patisserie Guide

Cannelle Patisserie sits on the ground floor of the Jackson Heights Shopping Center at 75-59 31st Avenue, near 77th Street, a strip mall with a parking lot out front. Inside, glass cases run the length of the room with Saint-Honoré, napoleons and buttery gâteau Breton.

The bakery opened in 2007. Its founders met in 1996 in the kitchens of the Waldorf Astoria, where Jean-Claude Perennou was executive pastry chef and Gnanasampanthan Sabaratnam, known to everyone as Samba, worked under him, according to a Spoon University profile and NYC Tourism. Perennou is French; the bakery's own story traces its recipes to the coast of Brittany, while Samba was born in Sri Lanka. They left the hotel to sell the same pastry to Queens.

Choosing a mall instead of a Manhattan storefront was the point. The bakery's website talks about serving celebrities and presidents at the Waldorf and now offering that work at prices that stay budget friendly. Time Out's long-standing listing describes a bleak strip-mall locale that hides surprisingly elegant bites, and the press page quotes The New York Times calling the shop a portal to some of the city's most ethereal croissants and exquisite napoleons.

Start with the Saint-Honoré, the cake the bakery puts first in its own gallery: a puff pastry base, choux puffs dipped in caramel and a crown of whipped cream over pastry cream. The napoleon comes in slices with the zebra-striped fondant top that a 2013 review on The Wandering Eater singled out. Then the gâteau Breton, the Brittany butter cake that the Times line calls a ruinously buttery rarity, and that you rarely find elsewhere in the city.

October changes the front case. As of this month, the homepage announces that pie season is here, with a pumpkin pie made from scratch using fresh pumpkins from a local farm and a pecan pie made with bourbon. Spoon University's longtime regular also lists peach tarts and apple pies in the fall and a cherry-pistachio cake in December. Whole pies and celebration cakes can be ordered through the Toast online store linked from the bakery's site.

NYC Tourism describes an international staff serving an international and exacting clientele, and calls Cannelle the go-to bakery in the area for wedding, anniversary and sweet sixteen cakes. That matches the reviews. A Google reviewer writing this summer called it her regular spot for birthday cakes and ordered a first-birthday cake there. On weekend mornings you see families picking up white cake boxes, neighbors in line for baguettes, and travelers grabbing croissants on the way to LaGuardia.

The room is plain and bright, with the long refrigerated cases on one side and tables where people sit with coffee, chai and a slice. One 2013 visitor noted there was plenty of seating, which is still rare for a pastry shop this popular. Service is counter service: you point, the staff box or plate it, and you pay at the register. Coffee drinks are part of the draw, and one recent review rated the chai above the chains.

The bakery's own location page lists Monday to Friday 6:30 am to 8 pm, Saturday 7 am to 8 pm and Sunday 7 am to 4 pm, while Google Maps shows a 7 am weekday opening. Either way, the 8 pm close Monday through Saturday is generous, and the short Sunday is the day to plan around. Weekend mornings are the busiest window, so for the widest choice of croissants come early on a weekday.

One honest note: come for pastry, not lunch. A Google reviewer this year praised the pastries as always amazing but said the sandwich he was handed looked far thinner than the packed versions in the display case. Order a quiche or a croissant instead if you want something savory. And if the Jackson Heights shop is out of what you came for, the same team runs a second Cannelle at 5-11 47th Avenue in Long Island City.

Time Out's directions point to the 7 train at 82nd Street–Jackson Heights. From Roosevelt Avenue it is about a fifteen-minute walk north to 31st Avenue, past blocks of attached houses and apartment buildings. Drivers have the easier time here than at almost any bakery in the city, because the shopping center has its own parking lot right outside the front door, which also makes it a practical stop when you are heading to or from LaGuardia Airport.

After a box of pastries, walk south on 77th or 78th Street to Travers Park on 34th Avenue, a neighborhood playground and plaza where families from the surrounding streets gather on weekends. Keep heading south and you enter the Jackson Heights Historic District, the planned garden-apartment neighborhood that the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated in 1993, with its private interior gardens hidden behind the long brick blocks south of 34th Avenue toward Roosevelt Avenue.

Roosevelt Avenue, under the elevated 7 tracks, is where the neighborhood's food scene really gets dense, so a pastry stop at Cannelle pairs easily with a later South Asian or Latin American meal around 74th Street. Since the walk back to the train runs right past those blocks, many visitors do the bakery first, eat their éclair in Travers Park, and finish with dinner under the tracks before riding back to Manhattan.

Address: 75-59 31st Avenue, East Elmhurst, NY 11370, on the first floor of the Jackson Heights Shopping Center at 77th Street. Hours on the bakery's site: Monday to Friday 6:30 am to 8 pm, Saturday 7 am to 8 pm, Sunday 7 am to 4 pm. Second location: 5-11 47th Avenue, Long Island City. Online ordering for pies and cakes runs through Toast, linked from cannellepatisserie.com.

For a first visit, a sensible box is one Saint-Honoré slice, one napoleon, a wedge of gâteau Breton and an almond croissant for the next morning, with a slice of Espresso 31 if you like coffee in your cake. Bring a cold bag for cream cakes in warm weather, ask for a celebration cake well ahead of a party weekend, and expect a line at the register on Saturday mornings.