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A Review of the Best Almond Croissant in St Andrews

For such a small town, St Andrews has an impressive number of cafes, and each boasts its own selection of coffee, pastries, and lunch items. Best known for its ciabatta paninis and luscious chai lattes, Taste, a beloved St Andrews cafe on a lively corner of North Street, offers the best almond croissant in town. I approached the task of determining the St Andrews almond croissant victor by creating a list of criteria that each croissant I tasted had to meet. Taste’s almond croissant defeated its competitors by having the best colour, texture, almond flavour, moistness, lamination, and garnish.

The Taste almond croissant lives in a humble vegware pastry bag with a cellophane strip displaying the pastry’s golden crust and dusting of powdered sugar. I typically consume this croissant casually, gnawing off bite-sized pieces while simultaneously keeping the remainder of the croissant in its bag in an attempt to keep my shirt crumb-free. For the purpose of this review, I strayed from my usual habits and brought the croissant back to my flat. 

Placed on a white plate, the croissant appears ordinary: an appropriate shape, the perfect colour, and garnished with powdered sugar and a sprinkling of slivered almonds. Although I don’t think that sliced almonds are necessary to create a delicious almond croissant, the almonds on this pastry added a satisfying crunch, enhancing the pronounced crispness of the flaky dough. Cutting the croissant in half proved a difficult task, the crescent pastry shedding a protective layer of pastry flakes and deflating a bit. Despite my seemingly negative language, the crumbling of the crust and the deflation earned the Taste almond croissant points; these occurrences mean that the croissant has the proper delicacy that all croissants must have. Cutting the crescent pastry also helped in examining the layers of the croissant created through the process of lamination. If you have watched a multitude of baking shows, you are likely familiar with lamination, a task in which pastry chefs layer butter and dough and subsequently fold these layers numerous times to produce a stack of alternating sheets of dough and butter. When the croissants are baked, the lamination creates webs of somewhat spongy and perfectly moist dough. In summary, the Taste almond croissant fulfilled all of my appearance requirements.

Next, I tasted each component individually, slowly flaking off a piece of the outer shell, licking almond paste off my fork, and removing a morsel of its doughy flesh. I noted the savoury quality of the dough and the potent almond flavour seeped in the almond paste filling. Despite the polarising flavours of these individual components, when enjoyed together, they created perfect harmony. My tasting every piece of the croissant was necessary to assess my criteria, but ultimately, almond croissants are enjoyed as one pastry, thus eating the components together is imperative. The flavour is appropriately subdued, suggesting that the almond croissant doesn’t want to overwhelm its consumer, making it a versatile snack with the ability of being enjoyed at any time of day.

When preparing for this review, I had to visit Taste twice because the first time I went, they had run out of almond croissants for the day. The next day, I arrived early, and much to my dismay, the basket in which they typically reside was empty. I asked the barista behind the counter if there were any remaining, and she responded by running upstairs and fetching a warm almond croissant in exchange for my £2.20. The availability of these croissants speaks to their popularity among students and residents of St Andrews. If you haven’t already, I highly suggest trying the Taste almond croissant. Whether slouched on the incomprehensibly comfortable couch in the cafe, perched on one of the tiny benches outside that provides a distant view of the North Sea, or on your way to class, I can assure you that you will thoroughly enjoy an almond croissant from Taste.

Illustration by Sandra Palazuelos Garcia