Paul and Jack — Restaurant in Raleigh

I have been coming to Layered Croissanterie on and off for about a year. I am going to start with the positives: the croissants. I have tried many menu items across the last 13 months, and have found most of them to be delectable. I enjoy all of the mainstays, though the egg danish and the almond croissant are my favorite. My most loved monthly specials include (not exhaustive) the glazed knot, the raspberry PAC, the Nutcracker, ThisIsHalloween, the Mario. Besides the glazed knot, my all time favorites include two savory croissants, which last December included one called Christmas Thyme with butternut squash and Parmesan, and this month (September 2024) another butternut squash croissant danish with a Parmesan mornay sauce.

Here is where we get to the negatives about Layered Croissanterie. The first and most consistent negative is how inconsistent the bakery is, with everything - the service, the communication, the menu options, and caring about their customers. For example, I’ve had more than a handful of lightly negative experiences at the bakery, but what finally got me to post this review today was that their social media page, on Wednesday, reminded followers that this is the last weekend in September and to come get the monthly specials before they’re done. I woke up and got there before 9am today to do that before they’re sold out of everything. I get there and they have zero of the butternut squash croissant. I ask, how can this be? The cashier says they are only doing that item via preorder this weekend. I think that’s weird, their social media page didn’t say that, but ask the cashier, will I be able to preorder it for tomorrow? She says yep, you should be able to do that. I try to do it right away and the order form says “sold out” already for tomorrow. I wait and try again after 2pm when the store closes, as sometimes the order form doesn’t update properly during the day. Nope, still says the butternut squash croissant is sold out for tomorrow.

There’s a few problems identifiable in this experience: 1., either misleading info coming from cashiers, or poor communication between bakers and cashiers, leading the cashiers to be unintentionally misleading; 2., wrong info about what is actually going to be available on the menu on any particular day via social media; 3., not following through on what their social media posts actually say, basically false advertising; etc.

As I said previously, I have had several experiences akin to this with Layered Croissanterie that I don’t have with almost any other bakery/restaurant in Raleigh. They’ll be closed with a handwritten sign on the door on days they’re usually open; they’ll be inexplicably out of necessary café items for days (once over a week) at a time; they make out like they’re “out of stock” of certain items when actually, they just stopped baking them for the week; the list goes on.

What keeps me coming back is when Layered Croissanterie is good, it’s really good. I reeeeally wanted that butternut squash croissant/danish today. I had been thinking about it all week and was so excited to have it again, and instead of them posting and saying, we’re nixing this one a little early, they misdirect me to online preorder an item that they just decided they’re done making. If they were better about communication and customer service, they would either make the item through the weekend as stated in their posts, or make it clear the item is no longer available. The bakery has been open for 5 years as of this summer, so it feels like at this point it isn’t a problem of kinks being worked out by an inexperienced team. I am left to conclude that the team can think up some really excellent recipes and execute them to near perfection on a regular basis, but is not interested in providing a stable, direct, responsive communication style with their social media branding or with their staff.

Will I keep coming here? Most likely. The baked goods are great. Will this happen again? Almost certainly. It’s up to readers whether they want to...

Their croissants are truly the best! 5/5 for food! Their curbside pickup during COVID restrictions is terrible. I would give it a 1/5. I placed an online order the evening before I wanted to pick up the food the next morning. The online order had a place for you to type in a description of your car so that they could l easily find you when you arrived. It would have been nice if they had actually used that information at all. My confirmation told me that I could pickup any time after 8:30 am the next morning. I was already thinking that 8:30 was kind of a late start time for picking up breakfast, but whatever. The confirmation also told me to call when I arrived so they could run the food out. I arrived and called and they said they’d be right out with my food. I was parked on one side of the street right outside of the shop. On the other side of the street there was a long line of cars up to their door. I thought that maybe that was for people placing new orders since the girl on the phone told me they’d be right out and didn’t tell me to get in the line. I waiting for 10 minutes before I realized no one was bringing my order out and I needed to get in the long line (which had of course grown in the 10 minutes I had already been waiting). I waiting another 20 minutes in the line before finally getting to an employee who just asked me my name and ran inside to get my food. Why that took 30 minutes, I don’t know! Why can’t they make a list of all the people who called in, get a cart with all those orders together and quickly roll it outside and deliver to multiple cars in one trip instead of running back and forth one car at a time. Also, other people who were parking and placing new orders at the door were receiving their food faster than all of the people who had already placed their orders whose food should have already been boxed up. I will not be going back...

Curb side pickup during the pandemic made this order both safe and easy, and boy were my wife and I in for a treat. First and foremost before diving into the specialty croissants, I needed to try their basic croissant to set as my baseline.

The smell of the croissants even after a 20 minute trip home was as if I was standing in the shop. The plain croissant had light and dark golden ribbons of flakey crust woven together beautifully. Breaking apart the croissant is a sensory experience unto itself. The initial crunch of the flakey exterior gave way to a soft and fluffy interior that needed a satisfying pull to separate it from the main pastry. The flavor was exquisitely buttery as one would expect from an artisanal bakery, and the mouth feel of the mixed crisp exterior and soft interior made for a satisfying experience.

The specialty croissants takes these beloved pastries to another level. I can only report on one of these specialties as my wife and brother were the lucky owners of the rest of our morning's bounty, but rest assured there were smiles and 'ohs and ahs' by both. My second selection was on the opposite side of the spectrum compared to the basic croissant which I had just devoured; for science of course. I now moved to the strawberry banana LC. This square quasi-croissant was also fried and had the consistency of a freshly made doughnut. Fully encompassing the interior was a pinkish filling sweet with strawberry flavor. I personally did not detect much in the way of banana but the flavor profile itself was decadent none the less.

If you are in the mood for croissants and want more than just the traditional fair, then Layered Cr. is both worth your time and your money; and with curbside pickup, interaction with the staff is cut to a minimum for...