Palena Coffeehouse

Glazed donuts (Photo by Palena)

The kouign-amann est arrivee. This lovely confection of layered dough, butter and caramelized sugar is a Breton specialty and we discovered it on our recent trip to San Francisco. Wikipedia says it means cake-butter and that pretty well sums it up. It's a bit crispy, very buttery and sweet and delicious.

It is front and center at the wonderful new Palena Coffeehouse. This is the front part of the pre-expansion restaurant, where the bar and cafe menu used to be served. It has been renovated as a coffee bar, serving sweet and savory pastries from 7 (8 on weekends) and desserts in the evening.

Frank Ruta, who has the best cheeseburger in town and one of the best prix-fixe menus, has brought his trademark exacting standards and doing everything himself from scratch now to breakfast. The pastry array is outstanding, with all the usual croissants, scones, coffeecakes and his takes on donuts and bagels with cream cheese. The cappuccinos are very good, nice and creamy in porcelain cups, though the Swing's espresso is not at the level of Dolcezza -- still miles better than Starbucks, which is not even in the race any more for us.

When the young baker brought out a new plateful of kouign-amann a customer asked, "What are those?" She heard "How are those?" and just said "They're wonderful." Andrea asked her what time she got up to bake all this, and she said 3 a.m.

We were a little late catching up to this new operation, which opened in November. We went the previous night for a cheeseburger in the Cafe and only when I went to use the restroom did I discover what they'd done with this section. It's a clever way to optimize use of the building and the kitchen and makes Palena a very special destination.