The spirit of the Crescent City has a uniquely infectious way of seeping into your blood and staying there so long as you draw breath. Many New Orleanians leave at one point or another, only to find a deep yearning to return to this magical place, for all its boons and busts, because it is and will always be home. So, when a bright and talented NOLA native returns from the great outside world and brings those talents and experiences back to us, it’s always a cause for celebration and merriment, usually with great food and drink.
Such is the case with Kaitlin Guerin, pastry chef extraordinaire and the driving creative force behind Lagniappe Bakehouse, which opened in Central City last year to applause and acclaim not just from locals, but national culinary media and James Beard Foundation as well. Guerin, who studied dance at the Willow School and pursued that dream on both coasts, found a passion for patisserie while living and dancing in San Francisco. “I was dancing in the Bay area for some time with smaller companies and doing contract gigs and found myself ‘stress-baking’ and discovering a lot of interest and passion in desserts and pastry,” she said. Guerin attended the International Culinary Institute, which led to an externship at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark. With her star and culinary career on the rise, fate would bring her back to the Big Easy. “I knew I needed to come back home,” she said. “My grandmother was sick, and I wanted to come back to be with family and spend time with her. And, ironically or not ironically, that happened to be January of 2020, right as the pandemic was happening.”
During that strange period, which spurred a storm of innovation amongst our culinary community, Guerin started a pop-up bakery out of her house in order to keep her skills sharp, and to keep her community well-stocked in croissants, muffins and cakes. Several years later, that pop-up birthed a brick-and-mortar bakery in the heart of Central City, offering locals and visitors a bounty of treats inflected with the flavors and incorporating ideas and ingredients from West Africa, polished French technique and a distinctly New Orleanian playfulness. That is exactly what you’ll find at Lagniappe. A sunny, cozy shotgun house on Euterpe Street with a sprawling live oak in the front yard providing perfect shade for a long, lazy breakfast or afternoon pick-me-up.
In a city renowned for its baked goods, how does Lagniappe set itself apart? One only needs to sample Guerin’s wares to discover that this isn’t your run-of-the-mill bake shop, but rather something uniquely special and novel, particularly with her use of both local ingredients and global influences. Said Guerin, “My partner, Lino, is Cameroonian, so we wanted to really make sure to keep as much as possible a lot of the ingredients within these foodways, and that’s easy and challenging in the way that our coffee program is as much as possible, single origin, African beans and we’re using single-origin Tanzanian chocolate from Chris at Piety & Desire. And it’s those little nuances, that was really where the creativity came from. I love working within the realms of the South and of West and Central Africa for ingredients and inspiration. It was a way to really allow everything to be pure and simple but also complex at the same time.”
There are many standouts on Lagniappe’s menu. For starters, you’ll find a perfect Parisian croissant, as flaky, buttery and airy as you might at a cafe on the Seine, delicate and wholly satisfying. But if you favor a bit more depth and complexity, you’d be wise to order the pain au chocolate — the one featuring that exquisite Tanzanian chocolate — and then perhaps move on to a seasonal danish bursting with fresh local blueberries and adorned with edible flowers. For the more savory-minded, you’d be wise to order the “Vaucroissant,” a Vaucresson sausage link nestled in a cozy pastry bed, covered lightly with a latticed blanket. It will likely be the most elegant pig-in-a-blanket you’ve ever experienced, and also a heartening collaboration with Vaucresson, another local Black-owned business.
But it’s the African flavors that truly make Lagniappe’s offerings unique. Grains of paradise, alligator spice and hibiscus all find their way seamlessly into Guerin’s pastries. “The grains of paradise varietal that we’re using has a sweet licorice finish,” she said, “and that’s on our grades of paradise bun, which is our take on a cardamom bun or cinnamon roll. We sprinkle it on top so that it’s highlighted and fresh, and that’s where you’re getting that burst of flavor.” Alligator spice inflects the “gator claw” here, Guerin’s riff on a bear claw, which you’ll find in sweet or savory options. Also, when it’s available, don’t miss Guerin’s corn muffin dusted with raw sugar and drizzled with honey butter, and the sweet potato Basque cheesecake. Lagniappe’s coffee program includes traditional fare, as well as a matcha flavored with moringa, and their version of folere, a traditional Cameroonian tea with bright notes of hibiscus, orange, cardamom and other warming spices.
As for how Guerin feels about her homecoming, the pâtissière couldn’t be more pleased to be back in New Orleans. “I love the community here,” she said.” I love that we all are crazy, and we love to celebrate in the middle of summer and do things that are unconventional. You definitely don’t get that energy in a lot of other places. We all love what we do, and we inspire each other, and we’re willing to collaborate together to do something even better than before, and that’s powerful. And I love seeing that in our customers. It’s just that reaffirming idea that I was meant to come back here and to be here, and to do this.”
About the Chef
A New Orleans native, Guerin grew up with a passion for dance, which she studied here and then at Skidmore College in New York, after which she moved to the San Francisco Bay area. A rekindled passion for baking emerged, lead to a position as a pastry assistant and a pastry concentration at the International Culinary Institute in California. She completed her externship at the Michelin-starred Restaurant 108 in Copenhagen. Upon returning to New Orleans in 2020, she started Lagniappe Bakehouse as a pop-up in her home, which eventually led to the opening of her first brick-and-mortar bakery last year. Guerin believes that she was destined to return to her home here in the Crescent City. “It’s that pull that the city has. Coming back and spending time with family again, learning about my roots and about myself, my identity as an Orleanian, as a Black woman in the South and in Louisiana, it felt like the perfect time for a homecoming.”
