People tore apart buttery croissants stuffed with caramelized bananas and bit into soft donuts filled with matcha pudding. Some had flakey cruffins— croissants baked in a muffin tin, rolled in sugar and piped with rotating fillings like baked cinnamon apples or dark chocolate ganache. Supermoon Bakehouse has been open for just one month, and it already has customers waiting on lines down the block.
The menu has three sections— croissants, donuts and cruffins. They’re all filled, decorated and designed for (expensive) Instagram moments. Croissants range from $4 to $8. Donuts sell for $4. And for the infamous cruffin, be prepared to pay $6.
If the baked goods sound familiar, it’s because the baker behind Supermoon Bakehouse was the co-owner of popular San Francisco bakery, Mr. Holmes Bakehouse. Ry Stephen opened the Bay Area bakery in 2014, where he first introduced the cruffin, but left after eight months with no public explanation. Mr. Holmes Bakehouse has since expanded to L.A. and Seoul, but Supermoon Bakehouse is Stephen’s first project since he left three years ago.
The menu changes whenever Stephen wants it to, so check the bakery’s Instagram often for new flavor updates. And if you want to try everything, make sure to show up at 8 a.m. when doors open. On weekends, they sell out of most pastries by 1 p.m.
When you finally decide to wake up, wait in line and shell out a meal’s worth of money on a few pastries. Here’s what to order.
1. Golden Boy Donut: Crunchy sugar covers fluffy pillows of rich, bright yellow brioche dough. Turmeric adds no flavor, but gives each donut its golden color. Most of its flavor comes from the silky chocolate salted caramel filling. Eat one under the hot pink light fixture that reads Bite Me NYC.
2. Apple Pie Cruffin: The most recent version of the always-changing $8 muffin-shaped croissant gets filled with both caramel apple pie filling and creamy cinnamon pudding. Buttery, crunchy, flakey pie crust crumbles top each one.
3. Banana Split Sundae Twice Baked Croissant: The pastry with the longest name also happens to have the longest ingredient list and highest price tag. For $8, you’ll get a croissant filled with caramelized bananas and chocolate almond paste. Topped with more bananas, banana caramel sauce, a piece of fudge and a spoonful of toasted meringue, it’s the love child of a pan of bananas foster and a classic chocolate croissant.
4. Chocolate Croissant: For something a little simpler and slightly cheaper, grab Supermoon’s classic chocolate croissant for $5.50. Chocolate laminated dough is layered with plain croissant dough. Then, the croissant is filled—with a heavy hand— with dark chocolate ganache and topped with crunchy chocolate bark.
5. Pastrami Croissant: If you’re looking for a savory option, Stephen takes smokey pastrami, bitter sauerkraut and spicy mustard, and stuffs them all into buttery dough. He rolls each $6 croissant in the same spices used to crust the pastrami and bakes them into the richest, most buttery pastrami sandwich you’ve ever tasted.