Nouvé Bakery Enters the Suburbs of Boston

Viennoiserie in Lexington, MA

Before we dive into this week’s topic, I wanted to revisit last week’s artificial sweeteners post. I wanted to say, first off, that I am grateful to have friends in the same field as me who also happen to be registered dietitians. It is important for me to say that artificial sweeteners shouldn’t be painted as inherently bad. They’re not. Plenty of people with metabolic disease or diabetes rely on these to avoid glucose spikes or weight gain. Additionally, many study designs conducted on mice or rat models aren't directly comparable to human studies due to the use of high doses of artificial sweeteners, leading to adverse results. It is important to note that humans would only be negatively affected by artificial sweeteners if they were consuming unrealistic amounts, such as thousands of packets per day, on a regular basis. To hear a little more about this topic, watch this video.

This week, I wanted to talk about a new viennoiserie that opened up in the suburbs of Boston called Nouvé Bakery. Nouvé entered Lexington Center in February 2024. With classic pastries such as pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants), to tonkatsu chicken sausage croissants, Nouvé pastry chef has no fear in spicing up the classics we know so well.

Since the shop opened up, I have visited twice. My first visit was pleasant. I arrived early in the morning while the shop was fully stocked. This bakery closes once it has sold out for the day. The pastries displayed were beautiful and elegant. The lamination of the dough was intricate and nearly perfect! The pastries I have tried had perfect crusts and soft centers, just the way I like it. I went for the pistachio escargot. While escargot translates to snail, this pastry was named after its spiral shape. A swirled pistachio and chocolate sweetened bread. These pastries are also known as pain russe. Generally, I see this type of pastry be filled with raisins (pain au raisin), so I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were utilizing other fillings for this bread. This was heavenly! It wasn’t too sweet, and each bite I was able to taste the pistachio and dark chocolate.

My second visit was in the middle of the day, so the options were a little bit more limited. I was intrigued by a coffee croissant that I had seen the first time I stopped by. The employee working there had just moved the last coffee croissant from the counter, and I was immediately frustrated that I would have to switch up my order. To my surprise, she was able to give it to me; she had moved it from the display since the top layer of the croissant had peeled off. The employee thought she had ruined the pastry and wasn’t planning to sell it. I told her I would happily take it off her hands, and that I didn’t mind that it was “ruined.” It most definitely was not, however, after getting to the center of the pastry, I was struggling to finish it. There was so much coffee pastry cream in the center, and it was much too rich. I ended up scraping half of it out of the pastry…

The friend that accompanied me to Nouvé loves chocolate croissants. She mentioned to me that the ratio of chocolate to bread was perfect. Many times, these pastries can be overfilled such as mine was. Both of our pastries were flaky and soft in the center, however, we both got very messy while eating these. They were incredibly flaky, which is great! Just a tad messy to eat :).

While I look forward to trying more pastries from Nouvé, I do want to mention the prices. Lexington Center is not an inexpensive place to lease spaces, so I understand why certain goods are priced higher here than in other towns, but the prices were much higher than I would have expected. I paid about $8.50 for the pistachio escargot and coffee croissant. A plain croissant or brioche goes for about $6.50. While I am someone who will spend the money to enjoy a pastry here and there, paying almost $9 is excessive.

I hope that you’ll stop by Nouvé to try their beautiful pastries, but start saving up now! I enjoyed my visit, and hope to try their beverages and new pastries in the future.