Two Bakery Pop-ups Open on the Same Brooklyn Block

Good morning from Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where the intersection of Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue is a sudden hotbed of morning activity. As of last week, the block that houses Mr. Mango is home to two ambitious bakery projects popping up inside restaurants during the day. At Margot, Laurel Bakery’s takeover of the front bar with various European boulangerie and viennoise specialities is a more permanent arrangement. And inside of Strange Delight, two doors over, Amanda Perdomo runs Amanda’s Good Morning Café, which is a New Orleanian take on the idea with some slightly more substantial breakfast items such as bowls of buttered grits and pepper-jellied breakfast sandwiches on sesame rolls.

We are here not to declare a winner in a same-block face-off, partly because both pop-ups are welcome additions to the area and also because through a wonder of scheduling, the only days they are both open are Wednesdays and Thursdays. Otherwise, Laurel runs Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays while Amanda’s is open on Mondays and Tuesdays. There is not a single day of the week when a pang for a fresh sticky bun must go unsated.

The morning buns at Laurel are flavored with speculoos cookies and they are joined by some similarly upscale-y options: nice croissants, kouign-amanns (good luck saying it the right way when you order one), oily focaccia with little slivers of squash on top, and pan Suisse that are like pain au chocolat but filled with a chocolate cream instead of those hard little cocoa nubs that infect too many pains aux chocolats around the city. Grab a baguette to go.

The vibe leans more American-nostalgic at Amanda’s — Perdomo is the same pastry chef who turned strawberry Jell-O pie into a citywide sensation at Kellogg’s — where the soft morning buns are crisp-edged and stickily sweet. But the real marvels are the fried-to-order beignets, costing a mere $5, dusted with less powdered sugar than they would be at Cafe du Monde (that’s a good thing: the du Monde doughnuts are buried), and neatly tucked into a folded paper bag so you can pop them into your mouth while you walk over to the C train.

Anna Hezel wrote about this city’s boundless appetite for little treats back in 2024, and with each passing day it looks increasingly likely to never abate. These two spots also seem to herald a new era for hype bakeries: They are already tucked into every storefront and corner available. They are now taking over restaurant space that’s already occupied before turning it back over to the original businesses at night. I don’t see a downside here, though I do wonder if Amanda’s will ever expand to weekend hours. Good beignets remain criminally hard to find here, and a spot that can serve them alongside a frothy Ramos gin fizz on a Saturday morning would be, and I say this with full confidence, huge.