French Bakery at the Ferry Building: Parachute's Croissant

Parachute Bakery's plain croissant, made with French cultured butter, costs $6.50 on the bakery's own menu, and in 2026 it won Frenchly magazine's Best Croissant in San Francisco. The counter is at 1 Ferry Building, Suite 5, inside the marketplace hall on the Embarcadero, open 8 am to 4 pm Monday through Thursday and 8 am to 7 pm Friday through Sunday. If you need a french bakery near me downtown, this is the one with the line.

Parachute comes from the people behind Sorrel, the Michelin-starred restaurant in Presidio Heights. Chef Alex Hong, whose résumé runs through Sorrel, Quince and Jean-Georges in New York, co-owns it with operations director Joel Wilkerson and executive pastry chef Nasir Armar, according to TravelSort's review. Food Gal reports that Armar grew up working in his father's bakery in India and was pastry chef at Sorrel and at two-Michelin-starred Saison before this project.

The bakery took over part of the Ferry Building space that was long home to The Slanted Door, as What Now San Francisco reported when the plan was announced, and opened in 2025. The brief, as the Journal described it, was laminated pastries built around seasonal produce from the farmers market outside the front doors. Within a year, KRON4 reported, Parachute had won Frenchly's 2026 Best Croissant and tied for Best Original Creation.

The French base is straightforward. The croissant is $6.50, the pain au chocolat with 60 percent single-origin TCHO chocolate is $7.75, and the canelé, flavored with brown butter and black Okinawa sugar, is $6. A pecan financier with malt and English toffee is the cheapest thing in the case at $4.50. Start with the plain croissant, because it is the pastry the award was for and the cleanest test of the lamination.

Then the menu gets personal. Armar's Indian upbringing shows in a $12 samosa croissant filled with Mountain potato, mint and cilantro chutney and tamarind jam, sitting next to a $12 shakshuka croissant with Early Girl tomatoes, a jammy egg and feta. Sweet experiments include a $9 vanilla and passionfruit cube, a $9 banana and pecan pastry and a $14 bowtie filled with raspberry, cream cheese and fresh lychee.

Parachute runs a full café, not a token espresso machine. Espresso is $4, a cappuccino $6 and a latte $6.25, and the house specials lean dessert-like: an $8 crème brûlée shakerato made with Indian filter kaapi, a $9.50 banana salted cream einspanner and an $8 cacao latte with Grand Cru Valrhona. The $7.50 masala chai uses first-flush Darjeeling, black pepper, saffron and jaggery, another nod to the pastry chef's background.

When Parachute opened, Food Gal wrote, it was selling out less than three hours after the doors opened; by January 2026 the crowds had become manageable, especially on weekdays. TravelSort recommended arriving by 9 am for the full selection. Saturday is the hardest morning, since the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market draws more than 100 vendors and their shoppers into the same building from 8 am to 2 pm.

Two pieces of honest advice. Eat laminated pastries on the spot: TravelSort found that a passionfruit cube carried home and eaten that evening had lost much of its crispness, so buy savory croissants for lunch, not dinner. And if the morning bun tempts you, know that the same reviewer still preferred the orange-scented version at Tartine. If the case is empty, Acme Bread's long-running counter in the same building is the fallback for a loaf and a snack.

The bakery takes pre-orders by email at info@parachutebakery.com, at least 48 hours ahead, with a minimum of six items. Pickups are available Monday through Thursday only, and the site states plainly that it does not accept pre-orders for weekends. Orders of 20 pastries or more count as catering and go through the same email. That makes a Thursday pickup the smart way to bring a box to a Friday office meeting without standing in line.

The building itself is part of the visit. The Ferry Building opened in 1898 as the city's main ferry terminal, and its 245-foot clock tower still marks the foot of Market Street. After decades of decline behind the elevated Embarcadero Freeway, which came down after the 1989 earthquake, the building was restored and reopened as a food marketplace in 2003, with the long skylit nave above the shops. Look up while you wait in line for a croissant.

Take your croissant out the bay-side doors to the benches along the water, where the ferries to Sausalito, Larkspur and Oakland come and go. On Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 am to 2 pm, Foodwise runs smaller editions of the farmers market, so you can buy the same peaches and tomatoes that end up in the pastries. From the front of the building, Market Street runs straight up toward Union Square, and Embarcadero BART and Muni station is a short walk away.

For a longer walk, follow the Embarcadero north past Pier 7, the long wooden public pier that juts into the bay, toward Levi's Plaza and the foot of Telegraph Hill, or head inland a few blocks to the brick buildings of Jackson Square. Heading south instead takes you along the waterfront under the Bay Bridge toward Rincon Park and its giant Cupid's Span bow-and-arrow sculpture, about ten minutes on foot.

Address: 1 Ferry Building, Suite 5, San Francisco, CA 94111, inside the marketplace near Gott's, directly across the Embarcadero from One Market Plaza at 1 Market Street. Hours: Monday to Thursday 8 am to 4 pm, Friday to Sunday 8 am to 7 pm. Contact is by email, info@parachutebakery.com; the bakery does not list a phone number on its site. Prices from the bakery's posted menu: croissant $6.50, pain au chocolat $7.75, canelé $6, chocolate entremet $18, latte $6.25.