This sliver of a French bakery founded by computer engineer Gautier Coiffard and his wife, Ashley, first-time food industry operators, opened in May and saw lines down Brooklyn Heights’ sleepy Montague Street—its croissant cereal was a viral hit on TikTok. Besides the tiny, laminated crescents ($50 for 8oz.), made with luxurious Isigny Sainte-Mère butter, there are chewy sourdough boules and delicate tahini chocolate chip cookies still warm from the oven.

The pastries are global at the bakery outpost of Otway, the seven-year-old New American restaurant. Owner Samantha Safer and head baker Nathan Uren sold baklava croissants and savory mushroom cheese buns out of the Cobble Hill restaurant’s dining room to stay afloat during Covid. Many of the grains, including rye and spelt, are sourced from a New Jersey farmers collective, and milled in-house to begin baking daily at 5 a.m.

When Mogan Anthony and Seleste Tan were unable to return to their native Singapore during the pandemic, they began to bake. Both are cooks—Anthony is a vet of Jean-Georges, and Tan cooked at the acclaimed wd~50 before it closed. And both badly missed the coconut and pandan-rich desserts they grew up with. In 2021, they launched Lady Wong on Instagram and then expanded to a brick-and-mortar location in Feb. Of an array of modern cakes, their top seller is the Pandan Royaltine.

Since Lysée debuted in late June, customers have lined up hours before the store’s noon opening. Former Jungsik pastry chef Eunji Lee’s exquisite corn cakes, crafted to look like an ear straight from the farmers market, are filled with multiple corn-based components—including sable butter cookie, caramel, and two kinds of cream. Top-of-the line ingredients, sourced from France and South Korea, make specialties, such as the signature brown rice mousse- and pecan-filled Lysée cake, so good.

Librae may have opened this spring, but to ensure that her New York bakery would have a taste of the Middle East, Dona Murad imported her sourdough starter from Bahrain, where it was originally made from dates in five years ago. Murad adds a Big Apple twist to Arabian Gulf pastries with selections like a babka laced with black lime and lemon curd, a za’atar-dusted mascarpone and ricotta tart crowned with cherry tomatoes from the nearby Union Square Green Market.

A bakery offshoot of the Scandi sandwich shop Smør had been in the works since 2019, but the pandemic pushed back its debut to July. Within the terra cotta-hued, minimalist space, head baker Rowan Gill, formerly of Bien Cuit, offers artisanal products from hot dogs to tinned fish, along with a wide range of Nordic-inspired baked goods. Specialities include loaves of rugbrød (Danish rye bread) and sourdough, salted chocolate rye cookies, and their signature kardemummabullar (cardamom buns).

During the pandemic, Sara Leveen and Ben Lowell of the popular Vietnamese spot Hanoi House turned part of their delivery store into a dessert space, served from a takeout window. At Hanoi Dessert Shop, the team focuses on Southeast Asian and tropical flavors, mostly served in sundae form. The Original is made with a vanilla and mango soft serve twist and a mashup of traditional Vietnamese sweets including coconut tapioca, pandan and lychee jellies, black sesame sauce, and crushed peanuts.