Infinite Variety:

Speaking of croissants, we think of the daily lives of French people who have croissants with a cup of coffee for breakfast and again in the afternoon. Croissants are usually eaten plain, or occasionally spread with a little butter and jam.

In Taiwan, from convenience stores to cafés, from specialist croissanteries to boutique cake shops, we come across various kinds of croissants and get to enjoy them in novel ways.

Companionable croissants

Walking among the restaurants and eateries on Jinzhou Street in Taipei’s Zhongshan District, we are engulfed by the delicious smell of butter. The croissanterie Yi Ke Song dazzles its customers with as many as 17 different types of croissants. 

Yi Ke Song opened its doors in November 2024. Its owner, Andy Chu, who had spent 13 years in New York, moved back to Taiwan in June 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic to oversee culinary operations for a restaurant group. That job introduced him to like-minded friends, with whom he decided to set up shop together.  

“But what we offer at Yi Ke Song are not Instagrammable dessert-style croissants. Ours are companionable croissants.” What does that mean? Chu says with confidence, “We see croissants as daily bread, which can be brought home, frozen, and reheated.” The name of the shop, Yi Ke Song, suggests everyday companionship: kesong is the Chinese for “croissant,” while yi (“suitable for” or “auspicious for”) evokes familiar phrases in traditional hemerology: yi jiaqu (suitable for marriage), yi dongtu (suitable for starting construction work), yi ruzhai (suitable for moving into a new home).

An artisan croissant garnished with fresh local mango.

Dessert or bread?

Chu’s words make us ponder the very nature of croissants and the ways they can be reinterpreted.

Claire L. is a connoisseur of French pastries who has studied at École Lenôtre and has translated Claire Pichon’s Fou de Pâtisserie into Chinese. She says that croissants fall into the ambiguous zone between bread and dessert. They are a kind of viennoiserie. Made from a yeast-­leavened, laminated, butter-rich dough, they are seen both in bakeries (boulangeries) and in dessert shops (pâtisseries).

Dessert-style croissants are sold in Taipei at Ten Thousand Coffee and Buttered Flour, and in Hualien at Found Croissanter. These shops give their croissants enticing looks by decorating them with cream, chocolate ganache, meringue, or fruit.

Bread-style croissants can be found at Yoshi Bakery in Taipei and at I Jy Sheng’s many shops across Northern Taiwan.

Sausage with chopped garlic leaves is a common home-style dish in Taiwan. The flavors go very well with croissants.

To put into practice his idea of a “companionable” bakery, Andy Chu insists on making croissants on-site every day.

Modern baking

Chen Li-ting, a senior researcher at the Food Industry Research and Development Institute and leader of a project on the transformation and enhancement of the baking industry, believes that in keeping with the spirit of modern baking, bakers can use croissants as a medium to explore how to design and develop aesthetically pleasing products. By reimagining the combination of dough, fillings, and flavorings in creative ways, they may invent an infinite ­variety of croissants, demonstrating to customers the remarkable versatility of this type of pastry.

For Chen, the logic of product development consists in fully engaging one’s target audience: that is, using different products to captivate different market segments. For example, artisan croissants, like jewelry, are veritable artworks. Customers take photos before eating them. Through the power of social media, these croissants may go viral and attract food pilgrims.

“To incorporate Taiwanese flavors,” Chen says, is to reinvent croissants for the local market: croissants, after all, “lend themselves to such wonderful diversity.” She tells us that it is creativity that gives foods their dynamic energy. Pearl milk tea is a case in point: while milk tea was imported from overseas, the addition of tapioca pearls turns the tea into a Taiwanese specialty, famous across the world.

These grape and cheese croissants cater to the Taiwanese taste for sweet pastries with generous fillings.

Taiwanese flavors

Yi Ke Song’s menu brims with Taiwanese flavors. When designing his range of products, Andy Chu wondered which types of bread were most popular in Taiwan. He lit upon adzuki bean bread, taro bread, and bread with generous fillings. “So we’ve brought out adzuki bean croissants, taro croissants, and croissants filled with fresh cream.” Aiming to cater to popular preferences, Yi Ke Song has also launched spring onion croissants, as well as those stuffed with sausages and garlic leaves—flavors familiar to most Taiwanese people. “This is our understanding of daily life in Taiwan. We give expression to it through croissants.”

Even the Taiwanese branches of Gontran Cherrier, a bakery originating in France, have developed new croissants using local ingredients such as tea, spring onions, and meat floss. Among the croissant chain Hazukido’s more than 30 different types of croissants, we can also find familiar flavors like pork floss with seaweed, taro, adzuki beans, and pollock roe.

Croissants layered with goose fat and spring onions are inspired by Taiwan’s popular spring onion bread.

Riding the wave of the popularity of cinnamon rolls, Taiwanese bakers have developed cinnamon croissants.

Andy Chu’s char siu croissants pay tribute to the char siu bread he came across in New York.

The nature of croissants

Chu emphasizes that from a purely technical, somewhat nerdy perspective, certain familiar Taiwanese flavors are actually at odds with the nature of croissants. Butter is essential for classic croissants, but not every food goes well with it, curry being an example. 

“We can’t lose sight of the nature of croissants.” By “nature,” Chu means the flaky pastry made by repeatedly folding alternating layers of dough and butter and then proofing the dough. A high-quality croissant is essentially defined by its beautifully distinct layers, honeycomb structure, flaky surface, and rich buttery fragrance.

Chu also tells us about his char siu (Cantonese-style barbecued pork) croissants, which have to do with his own experience in New York. He says that Chinese bakeries there all have char siu buns. People of all ethnicities—Jewish, white, African American—enjoy these confections, himself included. So he wanted to make his own char siu croissants.

Although there are no char siu croissants in New York, Chu says that “these foods share a fundamental logic”: like croissants, the char siu pastries we see at Hong Kong-style cafés are known for their flaky, laminated texture.

These cream-filled croissants are creatively flavored with Taiwanese Jinxuan oolong tea.

A croissant vendor offers free samples to attract the attention of passersby.

Creativity

In French, croissant de lune means “crescent moon.” Rather than associating them with the moon, some in Taiwan call croissants niujiao bread, meaning “cattle horn.”

Yi Ke Song’s croissants vary in shape with their fillings and preparation methods. For example, its sakura shrimp croissants—like those with sausages and garlic sprouts—look like sticks. Its taro croissants and char siu croissants resemble Swiss rolls, while its goose fat and spring onion croissants, as well as the pollock roe ones, are coil-shaped.

A foreign visitor with Chinese heritage posted an Instagram Story describing Yi Ke Song’s taro croissants as “divine.” Chu says that taro is a very common Asian food, and we don’t usually use such a hyperbolic adjective to describe croissants. Perhaps the magic comes from the crossover.

All croissants share a fundamental logic. Be they classic or innovative, they all serve as vehicles for Taiwan’s food culture and culinary creativity. Iminding in Taichung specializes in round croissants. Also located in Taichung, H. Yen has launched croissant pizzas and ice-cream croissants, in addition to croissants bursting with matcha fillings. In Taipei, Stroll Hygge puts taro paste, caramel pudding, and tapioca pearls in its croissants. These novel shapes and flavors have revolutionized our views of croissants. Why not come and see for yourself the stunning variety of Taiwanese croissants? 

For Andy Chu, “good” croissants need to have fillings that are popular among locals, and these local flavors have to be in harmony with the nature of croissants.