The 34 Best Patisseries in the World

Pleincœur is a pâtisserie that displays its cakes under glass cloches on a marble tower, like a jeweler with a sugar problem. The ordering is refreshingly normal, though: join the brisk queue, point, pay. Tables overlook the square at no markup, and the Paris-Brest comes with a hazelnut cream pile that makes restraint feel like a character flaw. The pastry chef has won The World's Best Pastry Chef Award.

1. The 50 The World's Best Pastry Chef Award 2025, sponsored by Sosa · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants · Maxime Frédéric
2. The Infatuation The 10 Best Pâtisseries In Paris

Verzênay is a Lincoln Park patisserie where the French classics arrive in textbook form: chocolate eclairs, crackly kouign-amann, a sourdough baguette that's often still warm. It also keeps an apple pie and a mango passionfruit cheesecake in the case, which the French would presumably allow. The Chicago macaron, filled with caramel, popcorn, and cheddar, is a Garrett Popcorn tribute in cookie form. Saturday mornings call for an early alarm.

1. International Baking Industry Expo Winner: Arshiya Farheen · World Bread Awards USA · Challah
2. The Infatuation The 29 Best Bakeries In Chicago

Bontemps is a Marais pâtisserie with a hidden tea salon in back, where velour chairs and servers in gauzy floral skirts bring the day's tarts and entremets out on a silver platter. The sablé base has a hint of fleur de sel and a generous hand with the butter. The salon marks up everything, so the lemon cake is smarter bought from the takeaway counter out front and eaten on a bench like a person with a plan.

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide
2. The Infatuation The 10 Best Pâtisseries In Paris

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. 50 Top Italy #1 · The Best Cannoli
2. 50 Top Italy #3 · The Best Cassate

A boutique pastelería in La Veleta where the conchas are made with French butter and the croissants are filled with frangipane. The chef behind it spent years in Michelin-starred kitchens under heavyweights like Gordon Ramsay and Pierre Gagnaire before deciding Tulum suited him better. The desserts sometimes look more like botanical specimens than pastries, vanilla beans and cacao fruits rendered in cream and chocolate with unsettling accuracy.

1. MexBest Mejor Restaurante de Tulum: Nominados · Premios MexBest
2. Eater The 24 Best Tulum Restaurants

1. 50 Top Italy #4 · The Best Cassate
2. 50 Top Italy #2 · The Best Cannoli

1. 50 Top Italy #5 · The Best Pralines

1. 50 Top Italy #6 · The Best Cassate

1. 50 Top Italy #9 · The Best Cannoli

A matcha bowl starts the meal while a tea practitioner runs a quiet ceremony at the counter, which tells you this isn't a pastry shop in any ordinary sense. Çayca is a dessert dining experience where a patissière builds each plated confection in front of you, French in structure but unhurried in pace. The tearoom-meets-Western-parlor interior on a Shibuya side street adds to the sense that you've wandered into someone's very particular obsession.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Brigat' is a bakery just off Place des Vosges, run by two Italian brothers who apparently looked at the French and decided to do the bread, the viennoiserie, and the pastry all at once. Bakeries here usually pick a lane. There are a few seats at the back, a tiramisu-flavored tart as a nod to home, and a crumble that tastes like it was caramelized by someone with a grudge. It has made The Infatuation's lists of the best bakeries and pâtisseries in Paris.

1. The Infatuation The 10 Best Pâtisseries In Paris
2. The Infatuation The 17 Best Bakeries In Paris

1. The Infatuation The 10 Best Pâtisseries In Paris
2. The Infatuation The 16 Best Croissants In Paris

Tapisserie is a small bakery in the 11th from the Septime crowd, where the stubby croissants vanish early and the bar for oversleeping is low. If you get one, there's a ledge out front to eat it on, and the maple syrup tart is on offer for consolation. The palmiers wear a crisp caramel coat, and the pastry case turns over with the seasons. Come early or come to terms with it.

1. The Infatuation The 10 Best Pâtisseries In Paris
2. The Infatuation The 16 Best Croissants In Paris

The kouign amanns at this French patisserie on California Street are craggy, almost weightless things that have earned a loyal queue out the door. Inside, the counter runs in precise rows: small rectangular cakes, custard cups, bostocks, croissants. The pace is brisk, so know your order before you reach the front. A few tables inside, a parklet out, or the sister café nearby for when you want to sit down properly.

1. San Francisco Chronicle Best bakeries in San Francisco Bay Area

A strip mall bakery wedged between a boxing gym and a bar on Allisonville Road, which is somehow the right neighborhood for ginger molasses monkey bread and buttery pain au chocolat. The chef left a D.C. political career for New Orleans patisserie training before landing in Indianapolis, and the French technique comes through in pastries that have no business being this precise in a parking lot. Saturdays go fast.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Indianapolis, Indiana

This is a neighborhood pâtisserie on rue Censier that's easy to mistake for a jeweler's, with pastries set out like they've been insured. The cakes lean classic, with a violet-scented Saint-Honoré made for the founder's florist wife as the one real flight of fancy. Expect a short line of locals buying a single éclair and treating it like a major purchase. Pick two things, because you'll want six.

1. The Infatuation The 10 Best Pâtisseries In Paris

Diamande is a small Algerian pâtisserie in the 11th where the cookies come in colors you'd normally associate with highlighters. The classic shapes stay put, but the flavors wander: pear and ginger in one, blackcurrant and lime in another, and a chile-shaped almond-hazelnut number with a slow peppery burn. The staff will steer you if you freeze at the counter, and a few tiny tables mean you can sit, though not for long.

1. The Infatuation The 10 Best Pâtisseries In Paris

The espresso machine lives in what appears to be a closet, but the coffee coming out of it is from Cafe Piansa, one of Florence's serious craft roasters. This is a tiny, ornate pastry shop on Piazza Beccaria, decorated like a miniature ballroom in old-school teal with ceramic and glassware that means business. The team sources Valrhona cacao and wild strawberries from local markets, and the cornetto-and-cappuccino crowd fills the few curb tables early.

1. Eater The 35 Best Restaurants in Florence, Italy

1. Eater The 38 Essential Berlin Restaurants

It's a pastry shop on Rue Montorgueil that works like a group show, with cakes from a rotating cast of famous bakers, several of them holders of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France title that bakeries like to frame in the window. The case changes often, so you're ordering from whatever the guest chefs left behind, which is a nice excuse to stop in more than once. It's a grab-a-box, eat-it-on-a-bench kind of place.

1. The Infatuation The 10 Best Pâtisseries In Paris

1. Eater The 30 Essential Boise Restaurants

1. Eater The 34 Best Restaurants in Madrid, Spain

Mille Et Un is a small Franco-Korean bakery in the 6th, where French technique takes on sesame, matcha, and ginger. The Paris-Seoul is a Paris-Brest with a black sesame paste hiding inside, and the flans have a crisp puff pastry shell and a middle set just firmly enough to count as solid. A few tables let you sit down with a ginger tea, and the baguette is a straight-ahead French one, which feels almost rebellious here.

1. The Infatuation The 10 Best Pâtisseries In Paris

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. Eater The 35 Best Restaurants in Porto, Portugal

1. The Infatuation The 10 Best Pâtisseries In Paris

The carved wooden display cases and Art Nouveau bones give this grand Lisbon patisserie the feel of a Parisian café that decided to stay. It has been around forever, and the croquettes and pastry counter, heavy with cakes, meringues, and traditional Portuguese sweets, have outlasted most of what surrounds them. Lunch and dinner are on offer now, but most people come for something small on a plate and a reason to sit longer than they planned.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Lisbon, Portugal