Our six judges, most of them French, from the local Rendezvous Meetup group taste test croissants in the gazebo at Fort Allen Park in Portland. From left, Andrew Rosenstein, Gladys Baudelot, Sophie Guillaume, Pierre Guillaume, Bernard Cabrera and Jennifer Wolcott. The croissants were from Bread & Friends, Standard Baking Co.
and Zu Bakery. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer THE TASK: Name the best croissant in Portland. (Don’t let anyone tell you newspaper reporting isn’t a demanding, high-stress job.
) THE LINEUP: Bread & Friends, Norimoto Bakery, Standard Baking Co., Zu Bakery and – if good intentions count – Belleville. THE JUDGES: Six members of the Portland Rendezvous Meetup group, which gathers twice a month “to speak French and enjoy the camaraderie of fellow Francophiles.
” THE DEETS: The judges met this month on the Eastern Prom for a quick game of boules as a warmup for the day’s highly strenuous eat-multiple-croissants-from-Portland’s-best-bakeries assignment. In fairness, most of the judges were French and had just come from voting online in the bitterly contested French election . A pick-me-up was in order.
THE QUEUE: On July 3, the scheduled taste-off day, it took over 21⁄2 hours, from 8:20 a.m. to 11 a.
m., to round up 12 croissants and three croissant cousin pastries for this assignment, a distance of some 4 miles total. At 9 a.
m., the line at Zu Bakery (which recently won a James Beard Award for the nation’s most Outstanding Bakery ) was 63 peopl.
