Fournée Bakery — Restaurant in Berkeley

The short: good but overrated and overpriced for their pastries (e.g. almond croissant) but great teff and sesame bread. Service has not been great with a particularly snobby experience the first time we went.

You'll hate me for being the contrarian to most other reviews, but fournee unfortunately doesn't live up to the hype for me.

It's good, don't get me wrong. Better than average i'd say. but not stand in line, inhale my pastry without breathing and bring all my friends good.

Came in with high expectations for "the best almond croissant in the bay" and for the chez panisse alum reputation. We've been twice in the last year, the first an awful experience I would've left a 2 star for due to snobby service and a stale tasting croissant, but this time slightly redeemed itself with standard service, an edible almond croissant, and a tasty and unique teff and sesame loaf I would actually go back for.

Details from last time: The first time we came about a year ago was awful. Mostly because the service. We asked if it was possible to heat up our pastries because we were on the road and had no where to rebake as is our standard for refreshing pastries. The response was a look of a disgust and "we don't do that here", like they were so great that they didn't stoop so low as to offer service to customers. I could see if it were busy or if this were still COVID times, but this indicated to me that they are one of the chefs / businesses that say we do things 1 way and you like it or not. Which is fine for some, not my cup of tea.

This time: Standard service with the mistake of leaving out the 2nd almond croissant we ordered. We weren't charged so won't give them too much negative.

Almond croissant was ok. Tons of butter making a rustic rather than refined light/airy style we've tried at other places like bree'osh in montecito. Frangipane was not super sweet which was a plus but still very buttery. Too much so for me. I love rustic style (like Gold Coast up in Duncan hills) but not for almond croissants.

Teff and sesame loaf was the star. A cool loaf given teff is normally the flour used for Ethiopian/Eritrean injera bread (a soft, squishy sourdough like wrap used to pick up food instead of utensils). Love the stuff and never tried as a bread. Combined with sesame made for a very nutty, earthy, textured loaf that does well for a simple roasted veggie sandwich with light avocado and egg. We also tried it as a pesto cheese sandwich but the pesto overpowered the bread. Wish we had bought the full loaf...

There’s a lot of free parking in the area so I didn’t have to walk too far, but the line was already around the corner around 11:15am on a Sunday. I only waited about 15-20min, so it wasn’t bad at all.

I also got suuuuuper lucky and got the last ham and cheese croissant! I definitely recommend first times to try it, but not the best one I’ve ever had. I also got the ham and egg croissant but it wasn’t that flakey and the filling was ok. I don’t normally get that many croissants but any time I see anything twice baked I have to get it so I tried the twice baked almond chocolate too. It wasn’t as crispy as I would’ve expected but it wasn’t bad. I also don’t normally get morning buns but this one had a lot of layers and seemed flakey like a croissant instead of the ones that are more like a bun/bread. It wasn’t that flakey actually but also not bad. The seasonal nectarine tart was too sweet tor me and was similar to a crumble tart. Canele was good but not the best I’ve ever had.

Surprisingly, the star of the show was the cheese roll! I got it because it looked really cheesy and it was BUT the bread was super chewy kind of like sourdough and I loved it! Very different from the one I had at ACME and I would definitely go back just for this.

I wanted to try the flan and toffee cake but they don’t do slices so I’m not sure if I’ll ever get a chance to try this :( I also want to try the pizza but I’ll have to come on a Saturday for that next time.

Everything costed over $3 but no more than $6 with the croissants around $4.25-$5.50. Pretty typical prices for a...

Fournée does a lot of things right when it comes to baguette, croissant, and pastries. For America, it met the expectations of a Frenchy. Their breads though are somewhat ‘flat’ (literally) and some are flat out burnt (which did not meet the expectations of my Frenchy). Parking near Fournée is tiresome but it's a quaint area that many people flock to on the weekends for coffee (Peet's is next door) and a breakfast delight from the bakery. Yet you cannot go wrong with their baguette, croissant, scones, etc. Since COVID there is a social pressure nudge to tip which doesn’t make sense considering there was no tip nudge prior to COVID upon purchase and aside from a few modifications nothing hasn’t really changed for Fournée (never offered seating, consistently have a long wait for customers as usual), I suspect they are capitalizing. Even so, feel free to decline the tip request as we do every time since their products are not cheap and you certainly are already paying...