Twisted Croissant: the butter croissant on NE Broadway

On NE Broadway in Irvington, Twisted Croissant's shop is where you send anyone hunting for a well-laminated croissant. There are also Twisted shops in Sellwood and Slabtown, but this piece sticks to Broadway.

Chef Kurt Goddard came out of classical pastry, started selling at farmers markets in 2017, and opened the Irvington shop 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 so it's crisp outside and silky in the middle, and it was a hit at the markets. The Broadway location became the production kitchen with a retail case up front, the Sellwood-Moreland and Northwest/Slabtown shops came later, and they still sell at farmers markets.

Most of the Broadway space is given over to making pastry, with subway tile, a glass case, Upper Left coffee and a few stools. Rows of butter croissants sit under the glass with deep golden shells and visible layers, and next to them are the cruffins, often topped with fruit and cream, with chouquettes tucked into the corner of the case. There's usually a short line, and the whole place smells like butter.

Get the butter croissant. Goddard has talked about folding butter into dough until the layers are the whole point, and you can taste it when you break one open, with grass-fed European-style butter, a real shatter and an airy inside. The plain one tells you the most about the lamination, and if they have a chocolate or fruit version, make that your second.

Then have a cruffin, if there's one left. It's the pastry most people link to the name, croissant dough in a muffin shape, filled and finished, often with rotating fruit. The vanilla-raspberry-rose is the one a lot of regulars tried first, with vanilla pastry cream, tart raspberry, a rosewater glaze and sometimes a little Chantilly on top, and a fruit cruffin is a treat when the fruit is in season. If you only have room for one thing, though, make it the croissant. Chouquettes are just cream-puff dough and sugar, small enough to eat on the walk back to the car, and sometimes there's a savory croissant too.

The Broadway shop is a counter with a few stools, so don't plan to linger. Pastries sell out, so on weekends get there earlier than you think you need to. If you know Twisted from a farmers market, Broadway sells the same pastry, and if you only know it from a photo of a cruffin, try the croissant this time.

The essentials are on the Twisted Croissant page.