Choux: Growing From Lower Haight

Nestled just off Haight Street on Fillmore, Choux has been making a very particular kind of French pastry for 12 years. At 296 square feet, the shop is smaller than a lot of studio apartments.

There are plenty of French bakeries in San Francisco selling croissants. This isn’t one of them. “We’re a dessert-first bakery,” owner Kat Kuo told me. Their signature item is the choux, pronounced “shoe,” a cream puff.

I asked Kat to describe a perfect one over the phone and it made my mouth water. A light shell, baked with craquelin on top so it has a bit of crunch, filled with custard. The raspberry is their bestseller. That purée comes from France, and each one takes about two hours to make from start to finish.

The other thing to know about is the canelé, a treat with origins in Bordeaux. Rum and vanilla batter, baked in copper molds until the outside caramelizes into a dark, crackly shell. Inside it’s almost a pudding. No filling at all.

Everything is made fresh each morning, and they tend to sell out by late afternoon. “We open at 10am, but our pastry chef starts at 6,” Kat said.

Laura Athuil opened Choux back in 2014, then moved to Los Angeles, looking for someone to take over. She wanted, as Kat put it, “someone who would understand the heart and soul of Choux and take over the baton.”

Kat took the baton in January. She grew up in Belgium, where her parents, who are from Taiwan, ran a Chinese restaurant. She’s a native French speaker and lived in Paris for years. Her roommate there was training at Le Cordon Bleu and later worked at Ladurée. Kat is upfront that she isn’t a pastry chef herself. She runs the business and works with two chefs, sometimes bringing in a visiting French pastry chef for a week to learn from.

She thinks about Choux in relation to l’apéro, the French habit of gathering before a meal. “That relaxed time when friends and family gather over small bites, drinks and conversation,” she said. “It is less about formality and more about slowing down.”

Which is why everything is small. “The intention of Choux is connection,” Kat said. “For you to bring it to someone, to a friend, or even to your next meeting.” If it’s your first visit, she’ll tell you to get a box of four, one of each, and share it.

Kat has been so overwhelmed by the loyalty of Choux customers. One customer bought a box of four to send out with his resume. He got the interview but it didn’t work out, so he came back and bought ten more boxes, for ten more resumes.

Another regular lives right upstairs and walks past every single day. He’s become the shop’s unofficial taste tester, and an honest one. When a new flavor doesn’t land, he tells them.

“This is a neighborhood bakery,” Kat said. “That’s what we’re all about, to get to know the people who come to us, and to make things they love.”

A few weeks ago that meant making 1,000 choux for a World Cup event. Five flavors, due at 11am. All hands from 6am, every inch of the shop full of pastry. They ran short of molds and had to split it into two bake-offs. The display fridge filled up. “That was such an operational puzzle,” Kat said. “[We decided that day] our max capacity could be 1,000, no more.”

That’s part of why she’s looking at a second location, somewhere with more room to produce. Nothing is settled yet. But she was firm about one thing. “We’re not going to move out of the Fillmore space.”

Choux is at 248 Fillmore at Haight, open 10am to 6pm, Tuesday through Sunday.