Dominique Ansel trained eight years at Fauchon before becoming pastry chef at Daniel Boulud's Daniel in New York in 2006. On May 10, 2013, at his own Soho bakery he introduced the Cronut, a laminated dough proofed then fried in grapeseed oil; TIME named it one of that year's 25 best inventions.
Best for The original Cronut, invented here in Soho on May 10, 2013.
Dominique Ansel was born in 1978 in Beauvais, north of Paris, and started working in a restaurant kitchen at 16 to help support his family. He spent eight years at the Paris pâtisserie Fauchon before moving to New York in 2006 to become pastry chef at Daniel, Daniel Boulud's flagship restaurant.
On May 10, 2013 — Mother's Day — Ansel introduced the Cronut at his own bakery in SoHo: a croissant-doughnut hybrid built from a proprietary laminated dough that's proofed, then fried in grapeseed oil. It took him two months of development to land on the recipe, and the pastry went viral almost immediately, drawing lines around the block. TIME named it one of the year's 25 best inventions of 2013.
Ansel has since built a small network of NYC concepts around the original SoHo bakery, including the Dominique Ansel Workshop croissant café in Flatiron and Papa d'Amour, a newer shop built around Asian bread culture; he has also been named World's Best Pastry Chef by the World's 50 Best Restaurants organization.
Home of the six-ounce chocolate chip walnut cookie — a crispy exterior giving way to a molten, almost underbaked center that defines the NYC cookie obsession.
Best for Six-ounce chocolate chip walnut cookies with molten centers
Nina's has scooped frozen custard on Canada Street since 1956, still making its caramel corn from that year's original recipe and sourcing ice cream from Gifford's of Maine and Perry's of New York. It's Lake George's only frozen custard shop.
Best for Frozen custard and 1956-recipe caramel corn
Nina's has operated on Canada Street in Lake George since 1956, and its caramel corn is still made from the shop's original recipe from that year — a nearly seventy-year run without a recipe change, by the company's own account. Rather than making its own base ice cream, Nina's sources from two established regional creameries, describing itself as pairing "Gifford's of Maine & Perry's of New York — two legendary creameries, one legendary shop on Canada Street," which the shop turns into more than 35 daily flavors alongside frozen custard made fresh in-house. Frozen custard is a narrower category than soft-serve or hard ice cream, and Nina's states it is the only shop in Lake George offering it, distinguishing the counter from the town's other ice cream stops. The signature ice cream sandwich pairs two soft cookies with whipped cream and a dusting of cinnamon, with a strawberry version singled out as the shop's classic. Beyond frozen desserts, Nina's makes hand-cut fudge, truffles, and chocolates in small batches on-site, and pours espresso and bakes its own donuts and cookies — a wider bakery-and-confectionery operation built around the frozen custard and ice cream counter rather than a single-product stand. The shop states it has been "voted best ice cream in the village," a locally sourced distinction rather than a national award.
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