The supreme croissant at this Ottawa coffee shop wasn't meant to stay on the menu

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Hugo Café

399 Bank St., instagram.com/hugoonbankstreet

Open: Weekdays, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., weekends, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Price: $8 for a pistachio supreme croissant

At Hugo Café in Centretown, the supreme croissants were originally a limited-time offering.

Last summer, Hugo’s then-pastry chef Ardianto Sumitro simply wanted to show that he could duplicate the eye-popping, virally popular creations that the Lafayette Grand Café and Bakery in New York had launched a year earlier. The re-imagined croissants that delighted the internet were shaped more like hockey pucks than pastries, and under their ganache toppings and inside their flaky embrace they concealed a blob of luscious, flavoured pastry cream.

“We didn’t plan to make it permanent, but it’s just so popular,” says the café’s owner Sowon Kim, who like Sumitro studied to become a pastry chef at?Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa in Sandy Hill.

Now at the café, which is one of three businesses under the same roof in Centretown, the pistachio version of the supreme croissant, priced at $8, consistently outsells its chocolate hazelnut cousin. It’s certainly a solid choice to inaugurate this series of weekly posts dedicated to culinary indulgences meant to help you get from Monday to Friday with something to look forward to.

With its admirable freshness and perfect balance of sweetness and nuttiness, the house-made, all-natural, stabilizer-free pistachio cream is the star of this pastry. The croissant is well and truly filled with this dense, light green ambrosia, and you’re best advised to eat this croissant carefully to avoid making a mess.

One reason to look forward to fall and winter is that the supreme croissants will taste even better, says Kim. Summertime heat meant the cream-filled pastries had to be refrigerated rather than showcased under glass beside the cash all day. Cold storage, or for that matter, summer’s humidity, caused the croissants to lose some of their flakiness.

So, as the days grow shorter and cooler, you can at least be thankful that Hugo’s supreme croissants will be … supreme-ier?

phum@postmedia.com

Do you have a favourite place to get a little treat in Ottawa? Send Peter an e-mail to let him know.

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