Savory Croissants Are Going Way Beyond Ham and Cheese

"For me, the light bulb moment was the steak frites croissant. I was scrolling Instagram when the golden brown pastry popped onto my phone screen, a hunk of steak poking out from between its lifted layers and a few peppered fries sitting on a smear of sauce on top. I couldn't look away, transfixed by this creation from Houston croissanterie Shakkar. I realized that savory croissants across the country had escaped all limits of tradition."

"In the social media age, croissants have been the proving ground for viral food. The Cronut started it all, and then came the croissant cubes, the cruffin, the cereal, the Suprême, and so on. "We will never reach peak croissant," the New York Times declared in 2023. And still, over the years, I, not a sweets person, have looked at the offerings at so many bakeries and found myself unsatisfied - despite the abundance of interestingly flavored, intricately topped sweet croissants."

Savory croissants are rapidly expanding beyond traditional fillings, becoming central to croissant innovation. Bakers are combining cuisines, stuffing croissants with steak frites, kimchi and Spam, bacon-egg-and-cheese ramen, sausage-and-bean, mushroom-and-short rib, and jumbo lump crab with cheese. Social media accelerates these trends, following earlier viral croissant variations like the Cronut, cruffin, and croissant cubes. Savory offerings increasingly occupy pastry cases and push the physical limits of laminated dough with bold toppings and hybrids such as cronigiri. Some bakers differentiate sweet croissants as nostalgic comfort while treating savory versions as platforms for experimentation and flavor fusion.

Read at Eater