Café Besalu shares many characteristics with the city’s most-fawned-over French bakery, Bakery Nouveau: you won’t find many croissants this French without a passport. The place has long lines on weekends and during breakfast rushes. The space is sweet—and mid-morning on calmer weekdays a pleasant place to read the paper—but it’s not terribly interesting. Not that “interesting” is necessarily what you need on a lazy morning.

Yet Café Besalu is also unique in certain ways. It’s less of a production than Bakery Nouveau; despite its accolades and loyal patrons, there’s a “who, us?” feeling to the place that’s very (Old) Ballard.

The pain au chocolat is amazing—snagging one that has just come out of the oven is worth planning your day around. Also of note are pear or apple pastries (when they have them), brioche, and almond delicacies. The coffee’s fine, but really it serves merely to make sure you don’t end up with a throat full of croissant splinters.