Who makes the best croissants in Boston’s South End

Photo Credit: Frenchie and The Yankee

This past weekend I arranged for a blind croissant tasting to identify which coffee shop in the South End serves the very best.  To help me, I enlisted three friends from France who now live here in the US to sample and critique croissants from five South End cafes.

Photo Credit: Frenchie and The Yankee

Cafe Madeleine (above) wins in blind tasting for best croissant in South End

Photo Credit: Frenchie and The Yankee

Croissants were judged on three criteria: size, texture and taste.  Each category was weighted differently with taste being the most important. While none of the selected cafes achieved a perfect score; Cafe Madeleine was the clear winner – consistently achieving the highest scores from everyone.

Flour in the South End finished with a respectable second place but the remaining three cafes; Wholy Grain, South End Buttery and Appleton Cafe scored very low, suggesting there is a lot of opportunity to improve.

Thank you to Sergio, David, Mark, Frederic and Olivier for all your help.