The four-pastry breakfast

When Bennie advises me on food, I stop and listen. Usually with an enormous appetite.

So when he suggested breakfast at Maialino, the Danny Meyer restaurant in the Gramercy Park Hotel where they make their own pastries, I readily agreed to an early morning date.

While I’m usually not an Italian pastry girl—too crumbly and tasteless—the Cestino di Dolci basket actually skewed more French, jammed with pain au chocolate and a glazed croissant, alongside a cherry scone and olive oil muffin. Yes, an olive oil muffin.

So let’s start there. God knows how many cups of olive oil go into this budino. I don’t think we want to know. All that’s important is how dense and moist and delicious it is, calories be damned.

As were the viennoiseries. The pain au chocolat wasn’t sick with chocolate. But the little pieces that were in there were rich and heavenly.


And the croissant? Another impressive example of moistness, grace à beaucoup butter.

As usual, I told myself I wouldn’t clean my plate.


But I found it pretty hard to abide by my own rules.