New Orleans’s Most Exquisite Pastries Land a Loving Home in Central City

Pastries from Lagniappe Bakehouse, Kaitlin Guerin’s bakery now open in Central City. | Randy Schmidt/Eater NOLA

Kaitlin Guerin has opened Lagniappe Bakehouse three years after starting her pop-up pastry box business

Katilin Guerin isn’t letting anyone else make her croissants. They’re too important, the centerpiece that drives the artistry and success behind Lagniappe Bakehouse, her pastry box pop-up-turned-bakery that’s now open in New Orleans’s Central City neighborhood.

“They are as close to what I would want in a proper French croissant as possible,” considering New Orleans humidity, Guerin tells Eater. “I’m just really trying to hone in on the viennoiserie to get it perfect.” So for now, at least, every croissant that passes over the counter at her brand new bakeshop at 1825 Euterpe Street is made exclusively by her. Longtime fans know that’s how Guerin has always approached her pastry business: meticulously, boldly, and, above all, intentionally. The story of her pastries “pretty much falls in line with the story of my business,” she says, which serves to highlight, celebrate, and reconnect the Black foodways of the American South using local seasonal and West African ingredients.

The chocolate croissant is a perfect representation of that. She collaborated with New Orleans artisan chocolate maker Christ Nobles (of Piety and Desire Chocolate) for a single-origin Tanzanian chocolate baton that’s baked in the pastry. The bun, a take on a Swedish bun, includes cardamom and orange zest and has a cinnamon sugar filling. It’s topped with grains of paradise, an aromatic West African spice that comes in many varietals (this one from Cameroon, Guerin says) and gives it a sweet-spicy licorice finish. She’ll use alligator pepper, also a West African spice, in another version of the bun for a nutty, earthy, citrusy finish.

There are benne sesame seed toffee cookies — benne being the heirloom West African sesame variety brought to this continent and stewarded by the Gullah Geechee people. What looks like it could be a matcha cheesecake is actually made with moringa, also known as the “tree of life” or “miracle tree.” The earthy herb native to India and Africa is similar to matcha but has no caffeine, so it will also be offered in a drink as a caffeine-free alternative.

Two savory croissants are made with Vaucresson’s sausage, the legendary family-run, Black-owned New Orleans company that’s been around since 1899. The breakfast croissant uses a custom sausage made specially for Lagniappe by Vaucresson’s; the afternoon croissant uses the company’s famed hot sausage. In the future, there will be more savory danishes and a breakfast sandwich with ham and cheese, but she’s taking her time filling out Lagniappe’s menu so that everything rises to her expectations.

Other items — the seasonal Danish, regular croissant, gateau Breton (French butter cake), and cornbread muffin, for example — are a bit more straightforward in terms of ingredients and composition. But those, too, have details that telegraph Guerin’s finesse. The cornbread muffins are topped with a zig-zag of Acadian honey butter and wrapped in fresh corn husks from the corn she uses in the muffin. “We’re aiming to be a low-waste bakery,” Guerin says, and although she hopes to one day be zero-waste, she acknowledges that reaching that milestone in the pastry business is a challenging, perhaps even unrealistic, goal.

In line with that realism is an overall sense of considered restraint from Guerin, a mentality that recognizes the importance of getting things right and the inherent challenges therein. She and her partner in business and in life, Cameroonian American filmmaker Lino Asana, approached finding the right space for the bakery similarly. “I was patient; I had the privilege of being patient,” Guerin says. “We knew it had to be somewhere we would want to spend all our time away from home. That’s a big deal,” she says.

When Cassi Dymond of Kalimera Construction told Guerin about the space on Euterpe Street, she was interested but had doubts. She wondered, “Do I have the right amplification of voice to come into this space and make it what it needs to be?” Moreover, would the neighborhood be receptive? Now that they’re in it, Guerin says she almost doesn’t have the words to explain the sense of accomplishment. “We really did that, we pulled it off,” she says.

It’s been a sizable undertaking. Guerin and Asana began the change of use process in September 2023 and started gutting the space shortly after. They have been hands-on every step of the way, designing the bakery alongside an architect. They worked with an illustrator friend of theirs, Christina Moreland, to give Lagniappe “more texture and a timeless vintage feel,” and approached the art with Guerin’s signature intentionality. Much of it, like the tiles on the countertop display and a central painting, is by Lenworth “Joonbug” McIntosh, an artist based in Los Angeles. The bakery has an all-day cafe vibe and coffee shop feel, which is also purposeful. “The neighborhood needed a coffee shop, and so far a lot of people think it’s a coffee shop, which is okay with me,” Guerin says.

Guerin says she feels humbled to be located right off Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard. Raised in New Orleans East, she learned while transforming the space that her grandfather worked on the corridor named for the Louisiana civil rights leader for a brief period in the mid-20th century. “It’s a small tie, but just what I needed to connect me to Central City,” she says. Guerin also pulls inspiration from Oretha Haley herself. There’s a small framed poster hanging in the bakery that says, “The Children Thank You” alongside photos of Oretha and Richard Haley. “Having the acceptance and ‘OK’ from the local neighbors was paramount. It’s locals first over anyone else. That’s who’s feeding the economy here, and that’s who we’ll always put first,” Guerin says. “I’m very proud to be here.”

Lagniappe Bakery is open Friday through Sunday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Beginning the first weekend in October it will open on Thursdays as well, and from there continue to add days gradually.