If there’s one thing we’ve noticed over the past several years, it’s how much bakeries have stepped up their game. We wanted to recognize these achievements by adding this category to the 2026 Eater Awards, celebrating five examples of excellence in pastry,
bread, and sweets across the country.
Some embody a personal expression of a baker’s identity, while others push the envelope beyond expected flavor combinations; all excel at a time when “little treat” culture is at its peak. — Missy Frederick, editorial director
Learn more about this year’s Eater Awards, presented by Capital One, and how editors selected them, here.
Bad Butter
Chicago, Illinois
If one new place in Chicago needs no further hype, it is Bad Butter. You’ll know you’re there when you spot the line cascading out of the whitewashed storefront along West Cortland Street, a queue that doesn’t let up until the pastry case is empty. Formerly a head baker at Soho House Chicago, Dan Koester was stuck at home like the rest of us in 2020, handing off excess home-baked sourdough loaves to friends and family and making some available for free pickup. After he was officially laid off that summer, he launched his own online bakery business, earning a massive following along the way.
One residency at the Emily Hotel later, Koester debuted his Bucktown bakery, demonstrating the full range of his skill. Still warm, charred, and dimpled flats of focaccia showered with scallion furikake rest on its shelves. Impossibly crisp and exquisitely laminated twice-baked almond croissants burst with subtle, aromatic almond paste. A spicy harissa monkey bread with a cloudlike texture is cooled by a pool of creamy labneh drizzled with silky olive oil.
The bakery’s menu has breadth and also manages to arc with the season. Customers snake along the floor waiting their turn to claim a towering cruffin, dusted in fine grains of sugar and piped full of ginger plum jam, or a seasonal tart piled with plump, lacquered blueberries. A pastry box filled with these confections is well worth the wait. — Brenna Houck, dining editorial manager
Chainsaw
Los Angeles, California
Born as an underground dinner party operated out of Karla Subero Pittol’s Echo Park garage, Chainsaw finally got its own digs in November 2025 in the form of a lively cafe in Melrose Hill, an unquestionably gentrifying neighborhood that has become home to some of Los Angeles’s best independent restaurants. At the cafe, Subero Pittol channels her Venezuelan heritage through a menu of arepas plump with beans, limey guasacaca, and cheese; a Venezuelan hot dog (“perro caliente”) buoyed by an acidic slaw; and her bracingly tart passionfruit-lime icebox pie, which commands a cult following all its own.
Stepping into Chainsaw feels like you could be in Subero Pittol’s own kitchen as she greets regulars and newcomers as if they are old friends. Customers study a handwritten menu that changes daily — it doesn’t help to come in too attached to any one dish (save the ever-present icebox pie) when you may get tempted by another. The cafe’s impact on Los Angeles feels clear in the near-constant crowds that hover outside, reading their newspapers over an espresso or tucking into the latest of Subero Pittol’s ideas, such as a full English breakfast served for a single day. In a city lacking in untamed Venezuelan cooking, Chainsaw offers a home for Subero Pittol to celebrate the cuisine in a way that feels distinctly Los Angeles. — Rebecca Roland, deputy editor, Eater Southern California/Southwest
Diljān
Brooklyn, New York
With both Afghan and Latin American influences, Diljān gives New Yorkers a bakery with a point of view and innumerable reasons to become a regular. Ali Zaman and Mohamed Ghiasi, owners of Astoria’s Little Flower Cafe, teamed up with Bryan Ford, Honduran American baker and cookbook author, to conceptualize the bakery, now perched on a corner near Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Heights.
Their combined talent makes for some of the city’s most compelling baked goods. For the Saffron Shah, laminated pastry holds delicate saffron cream in the shape of a crescent, an important Islamic symbol. Halwa tops the sticky bun, while a swirl of samosa pastry wraps halal lamb under a dusting of powdered sugar. Don’t miss the enormous Afghan flatbread crowned by toppings such as halal beef bacon with scallions or sour cherry cream cheese. The team has also branched into pizzas topped with cheese and Afghan cumin, kofta kebabs, or beef pepperoni. Look for specials like the flan with cardamom-poached apricots and conchas stuffed with firni, a rice pudding. — Nadia Chaudhury, deputy editor, Eater New York
Parachute Bakery
San Francisco, California
San Francisco’s pastry game is stronger and more competitive than ever before, and Parachute Bakery steps to the forefront of a crowded field with a mix of patisserie standards and seasonal standouts. At his Ferry Building bakery, pastry chef Nasir Armar marries his fine dining training, honed at Michelin-starred Sorrel and Saison, with flavors that make everyone sit up and take notice (and snap a food photo or two for their socials).
The team’s exacting execution of layer after buttery layer is prominent in every curve of their lychee-laden bowtie croissant, and every corner of their cube croissant. They pay just as much attention to ingredients and fillings, combining the black sesame and yuzu in charcoal-colored, sesame-topped cookies, and pairing ripe seasonal fruit with laminated pastries. A summertime mango is sliced into a bulging mound atop a bed of vanilla tapioca pudding, with a croissant pastry shell as its base.
Vegetables and savory complements are given their own footing on the menu. Stalks of grilled asparagus shine in a baton-shaped croissant shell, with fennel jam, sheep’s milk ricotta, and ramp pesto alongside them; one brief, bordering-on-gimmicky croissant got piped with clam chowder, a reference to the soup in a bread bowl famously served on the city’s wharf. Even potato-laden samosas and bright tomato shakshuka get interpreted into pastry form. Parachute succeeds with its experimental vision, a hype well-earned that leaves fans clamoring for what they’ll come up with next. — Dianne de Guzman, editor, Eater SF
The Pastry Project
Seattle, Washington
Just off Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle, customers begin queuing up in front of two charcoal-painted Dutch doors flanked by a picture window draped with a rainbow pennant garland. Beyond the glass, bakers at the Pastry Project arrange neat slices of layer cake, trays of cinnamon rolls generously slathered with glossy frosting, and piles of oatmeal cookies sandwiching cream. When the doors finally swing open, the line moves briskly to accommodate eager patrons. Some snatch pastry boxes to go, while others linger at one of the small metal patio tables nearby, treasuring spoonfuls of light yet robust strawberry shortcake from a tiny white cup while looking out at Puget Sound just a few blocks in the distance.
Various iterations of the Pastry Project have been around for a few years now, but until recently, the public had to pick up a baking kit or wait until summer for the walk-up window to swing open for its popular soft serve ice cream. That changed when founders Emily Kim and Heather Hodge debuted their bakery window last fall, ensuring access to the Pastry Project’s salted chocolate chip cookies year-round, alongside seasonal rotating treats like maple-sweetened pancake croissant wheels and feather-light peanut butter and jelly cakes with whipped peanut frosting. But beyond elephant-ear-esque cardamom croissants, Kim and Hodge have embedded a mission into their model, in collaboration with local partners, by offering free pastry education, career training, and job placement to individuals with barriers to employment. So far, 41 students across nine cohorts have participated in the program. Residencies are available for entrepreneurs looking for affordable space — and there’s even a community cookbook library onsite. That’s pretty sweet. — BH
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