St. Honoré: the Thurman croissant

Westside croissant fans have been arguing for years about which laminated pastry is worth crossing the river for, and after enough “we can just get one on Division” mornings we FINALLY ran the errand to the shop we still mean when we say the westside croissant: St. Honoré Boulangerie on the Northwest 23rd and Thurman corner! Dominique Geulin opened the flagship in 2003 and named it for the patron saint of bakers. He grew up above a family bakery in Étretat on the Normandy coast, trained in France, helped open Le Panier in Portland years earlier, and holds a Meilleur Ouvrier de France title in boulangerie — the bakers’ competition that actually means something in that world. Out of all the later counters downtown, on Division, in Lake Oswego, and on Macadam, the Thurman room is still the one with the yellow awning, the patio, and the sense that the bakery is the original idea.

Step under that awning at 2335 Northwest Thurman and the room does a full French-neighborhood trick without feeling like a theme park. Floor-to-ceiling windows pour daylight onto flagstone floors. Wicker baskets hold baguettes and boules in rows that look almost too arranged until you remember they are the day’s bread. A large wooden communal table sits in the middle. Antique accents and vintage cafe chairs keep the palette in that warm straw-and-honey range, and a statue of Saint Honoré watches the European oven like the patron saint is on the clock. We can also see the bakers rolling dough in view of the room, which is the design, not a set. The pastry case is the glass box under all that wood: butter croissants with that blistered, shatter-when-you-touch-it shell, almond croissants buried under toasted slices and a little too much temptation, pains au chocolat, tarts, quiche with a crust that actually breaks under a fork, and canelés if they are still in the tray.

The croissant is the order. Plain first, so we know what the butter is doing — shattering exterior, honeycomb interior, the kind of yellow that only happens when the lamination is the craft. Almond if we already have a favorite and we are not here to be noble. We do not get cute about a flavor of the month when the classic is the reason the shop exists. Then the baguette — flour, water, salt, yeast, the vegan loaf on the board — because a boulangerie that cannot send you out with bread is just a pastry case. After that, look at the rest of the French board the way you would in an actual neighborhood shop: a croque monsieur if lunch is why you stopped, a tart if you are sitting down, a coffee on the mostly outdoor heated patio if the 23rd weather is doing that rare good thing. We have had mornings that were only a croissant and a coffee on that corner, and that is a CORRECT use of this address!

Several counters exist, and we are picky about that on purpose. If you live on the eastside, go to the eastside counter and stop making a special westside trip for a croissant you can get closer to home. If you are already on 23rd, this is the stop. The flagship keeps long bakery hours for this city — 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily — which is why it works as a westside habit and not only as a weekend treat. The line on a sunny 23rd morning is real. It also moves, because the shop has been doing this for two decades and the bakers are visible for a reason.

We like St. Honoré because it is not trying to invent a new laminated object. Geulin’s whole project is the French neighborhood bakery, rebuilt on a Portland corner, with the work in public and the saint next to the oven. Take the croissant. Take the baguette if you are feeding people later. Then sit on the patio if the weather allows, or get back on 23rd and let the next shop be someone else’s. The westside croissant is a specific errand. This is the counter we still run it to, and we are not done crossing town for that shatter!

More on the place page: St. Honoré Boulangerie