Twisted Croissant: butter croissant on Broadway

Setting a course for NE Broadway, we are doing the Irvington counter today, and if you are already thinking about Sellwood or Slabtown, good — those counters exist — but we are not doing a three-stop pastry crawl in one paragraph! Portland croissant fans have been wondering which shop still treats lamination as the actual job, and Twisted Croissant FINALLY keeps answering that question every morning.

Twisted is the shop we send people to when they want a croissant that still laminates — not a bread that was shaped like a crescent, and not a product that once met butter, but an actual croissant. Chef Kurt Goddard came out of classical pastry work, spent years on the farmers-market circuit starting in 2017, and opened the Irvington brick-and-mortar in 2019 after a long wait on the historic reviews. The first “crime,” as the shop tells it, was a cruffin: croissant dough baked in a muffin tin, shatter on the outside, something silky in the middle. Markets loved it. The Broadway room became the production shop with a retail case up front, and Sellwood-Moreland and the Northwest / Slabtown counter came later, while farmers markets stayed part of the week. We are still talking about Broadway.

Walk in and we can also see a room that is almost entirely devoted to making pastry. Subway tile, a glass case packed with laminated dough, Upper Left coffee, a few stools, and not a lot of extra furniture, because most of the square footage is production. Rows of butter croissants sit under the glass with that deep golden shell and visible layers, and next to them the cruffins rise up like little crowns, often finished with fruit and cream. Chouquettes hide in the corner of the case like the walk-back-to-the-car snack they are. It feels super Irvington — Broadway traffic outside, a short line inside, the smell of butter so strong you can taste it before you order — and we love that nobody tried to turn this into a brunch restaurant!

Out of all the loud things in that case, the must-get is still the croissant, and we mean THAT croissant — butter, layers, the one you pick up and feel flex before it flakes! Goddard has talked about folding butter into dough until the layers are the point, and you can taste the difference when you break one open: grass-fed European-style butter, a shatter that is actually shatter, and an interior that is airy instead of bready. If you skip it because the cruffin looks louder, you missed the shop. Get the plain butter one if you want to know whether the lamination is real. Get a chocolate or fruit version if that is what the case is offering and you already trust the dough.

Then the cruffin, if there is one left that you actually want. This is the pastry people associate with the name — croissant dough in a muffin shape, filled and finished, often rotating with fruit. The vanilla-raspberry-rose version is the signature a lot of us met first: vanilla pastry cream, tart raspberry, a rosewater glaze, sometimes a little Chantilly on top. If a fruit cruffin is out and the fruit is in season, that is the fun order. If you only have room for one thing, it is still the croissant, and we will happily die on THAT hill! Chouquettes if you want something small that is still pastry — cream-puff dough, sugar, the thing you eat while you are walking back to the car so the croissant makes it home. If a savory croissant is sitting there, you can see it.

Know this before you go: this is the Irvington counter on NE Broadway, other Twisted counters exist in Sellwood and Slabtown, and the Broadway shop is a case-and-counter room, not a lingering living room. Pastries sell. We go earlier than we think we need to on weekends, and we decide the croissant-versus-cruffin question before we hit the glass. If you only know Twisted from a farmers market, the Broadway visit is the same dough with walls around it. If you only know it from a photo of a cruffin, reset. The croissant is the craft. The cruffin is the twist. Both can be in the bag. The croissant has to be!

Want the short version? It’s on the Twisted Croissant page.