Bon Appetit is in the process of slowly trickling out the national winners of its annual “Best New Restaurants” rollout, and San Francisco has been the recipient of quite a few so far. Namely, Leo’s Oyster Bar has won the “Best Designed Restaurant of the Year, Tacos Cala is among the best new tacos of 2016, and now there’s another to add to the list: the tiny Arsicault Bakery in the Inner Richmond has been named the nation’s best new bakery of the year for what Bon Appetit calls its “preposterously flaky” croissants.
Arsicault Bakery quietly opened last April, specializing in French pastries (croissants, kouign amann, quiche, and more) from first-time bakery-owner Armando Lacayo. Baking is in Lacayo’s blood, as his great grandparents owned Arsicault Boulangerie in France in the 1900s — one of the original delivery carts from the boulangerie is displayed inside the bakery, alongside a photographer of Lacayo's predecessors taken in 1907.
So what happens when a title like that is bestowed upon a small, neighborhood business? To start, there’s a consistent line down the block and a new limit on the number of pastries one person can buy. We chatted with owner Lacayo to get the whole low down.
ESF: Congratulations! How has business been?
Lacayo: It's crazy. It’s overwhelming. I was not prepared yesterday; I found out at 6 p.m. the night before. So yesterday we were able to do more preparing for today. The line is half the block — I’m afraid to go out and look at it.
ESF: What preparing did you do?
Lacayo: We made more product, and today we’re limiting the number of items that people can get, so two of each with a limit of a total of six items per person. I'm lucky that I don’t have one single product that people are looking for; I don’t make a cronut or cruffin or cro-something else. People like a variety of things I make, so I can put a general limit at this point of six items total. All I care about is quality and to keep doing things the way I’ve been doing them, but hopefully produce a bit more.
ESF: Did you think you’d be here today when you opened a little over a year ago?
Lacayo: I just wanted to open a bakery here in SF because people are picky like me. So it was a challenge because there are a number of good bakeries in the city, and we wanted to do things well.
Until three years ago I was on a computer managing mutual funds. But a long time ago I decided to make my own croissant, so I opened a book and was really bad at the beginning, but I'm very picky and so it got better in the last few years to the point where I wanted to share what I was making. I'm here to share what I like. I only make things I like — I'm never going to make a cupcake. Apparently other people agree with my taste. It’s amazing.
Arsicault Bakery is open seven days a week at 397 Arguello Blvd.: Monday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., Tuesday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.