CONCORD, CALIFORNIA – When Concord’s new French Spot bakery opened this weekend, lines snaked out the door and around the corner past Trader Joes.
Here at the Bay Area Telegraph, we’ve been waiting for The French Spot to open for a long time. When it did, we naturally had to try it during the opening weekend!
I stopped by and waited in an (admittedly shorter but still out-the-door) line to test out the new bakery’s delicacies.
I expected the pastries to be really good. But one extraordinary item truly surprised me.
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San Francisco’s Best Pastries, in Concord
The French Spot is an independently owned pastry shop created by husband-and-wife team Vincent Attali and Maria Zapata, a French-American duo who describe it as a family-run business.
The French Spot’s original location is in the city, in Lower Nob Hill. There, the bakery’s croissants (including ones with Asian inspired ingredients like mochi and ube) routinely sell out before noon.
Attali, in particular, brings some serious culinary credentials to the table (see what we did there??). He took first place in the AUI Pastry Cup in 2016 and has appeared on pastry competition shows including Netflix’s Sugar Rush.
He’s also worked in 3-Michelin-star kitchens at places like Robuchon Las Vegas and Daniel in NYC.
Zapata is an accomplished painter and illustrator who decorates the bakery’s cakes, and also painted a lovely new mural inside the Concord location.
When I first spoke to Attali back in September, he told me he wanted to bring San Francisco-level pastries to the East Bay, where he and Zapata live.
Visiting the Bakery
The new outpost of the French Spot is located in Concord, at the Oak Grove Plaza shopping center (785 Oak Grove Road, Suite G-3) right by Trader Joe’s.
It’s a tiny storefront. When I visited, people had to squeeze past each other to get in and out of the front door.
Inside, though, Attali and Zapata have entirely transformed the space. A display case greets guests, while a massive oven fills the back of the store.
There’s a special glass-walled room, kept at an extremely low temperature to facilitate making perfect dough without the risk of butter melting or overheating.
In the front, there are a few tables, and Zapata’s mural fills the space with color.
When I visited around 11am on Sunday, most items were already sold out. It seems like this will be a pattern, mimicking the vibe at the original San Francisco store. Arrive early!
I couldn’t get my hands on one of The French Spot’s signature ube croissants. But there were still plenty of tasty items to try.
I grabbed a banana cream pie, kougain aman (basically a croissant loaded with extra sugar and butter–The New York Times called them “the fattiest pastry in Europe”) and cream puff. I also grabbed the last loaf of sourdough bread in the bakery.
Once the initial opening weekend intensity dies down a bit, the interior at The French Spot will likely be a nice spot to eat. For now, though, I took my items home to try them out with my wife and three kids, since the waiting baked goods fans entirely filled the inside of the French Spot.
The Food
I love banana cream pie, so the mini pies at The French Spot are perfect. I liked the rich and banana-intensive pastry cream that filled the pie.
The one-person pie came topped with a caramelized, foster-esque slice of banana, which was decorative but also very tasty.
Likewise, the cream puff was amply filled with pastry cream–sweet but not obnoxiously so–and had a nicely chewy texture on the outside. The large size and flat shape makes this one feel creamier than the tiny cream puffs you often find in France, which are more dough than cream.
The kougan aman will be breakfast tomorrow! But it looks excellent, with plenty of crunchy caramelized sugar covering the outside.
The standout item, though, turned out not to be any of these items. It was the bread.
The French Spot’s humble sourdough loaf is extraordinary. Priced at an extremely reasonable $9, the mid-sized loaf was perfectly craggly on the outside, with a rich chocolate brown color.
Inside, this loaf is snow-white, just the slightest bit chewy, and clearly sourdough without hitting you over the head with its yeastiness.
The gold standard of sourdough in the Bay Area is Tartine’s iconic Country loaf. So let’s compare The French Spot to that.
Simply put, it’s better. The Tartine Country loaf is rustic and extremely glutinous, with a deep flavor that feels a bit like a Guinness transmogrified into bread. It’s fantastic, don’t get me wrong.
But it also takes itself very seriously. It’s the kind of bread you might get to complement a special cioppino or impress an out-of-towner, not necessarily something you’d sit down to eat on a Tuesday.
The French Spot’s loaf is lighter. It’s fluffy and airy, while the crust still keeps the kind of chewy, slightly sour intensity that makes loafs like Tartine’s so good.
As I was photographing the bread, my four-year-old walked in and grabbed a piece. He chewed for a moment, and then demanded to know “Who made this??”
“The French Spot,” I told him.
“I love it!” he said, taking another piece and quietly leaving.
Everyone in my family felt the same way–we polished off an entire loaf in about 10 minutes, cut into thick slices, lightly toasted, and served with butter and soup.
This is the ideal bread–as fancy as Tartine’s loaf, yet accessible enough to serve to your whole family, or to enjoy dipped in some Campbell’s Tomato.
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The Verdict
The French spot is still getting set up; I’ll definitely need to come back to try the ube croissants and other famous items.
But already, I can tell that it will be a hit.
Not by the throngs of people snaking out the door, because that can fade. And not by the extravagant, fancy, colorful, Instagram-friendly items, because sometimes those are things you get once and then move on from.
No–I can tell the French Spot will be here a while because it makes something extremely simple, extremely well, at a fair price.
It’s sometimes said that you should judge a chef not by their complex and fancy dishes, but by how well they make a simple roasted chicken. The same could be said for a baker, but about bread.
Come to the French Spot to try the fancy sweets, by all means. Grab an ube croissant because they’re probably tasty, and will look amazing on the ‘Gram.
But make sure to grab a humble loaf of their remarkable bread while you’re there. You might find it outshines its fancy, famous neighbors.
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