Pavé’s fresh bread and quirky interior set it apart from other New York cafes and bakeries.
November has begun, autumn leaves have covered the city streets, and the temperature has dropped to winter frost. While New Yorkers are getting used to the dreary days, they also seem to be looking for the perfect cozy coffee shop to enjoy the end of autumn with a hot drink. Pavé, a café and bakery that opened about two months ago, is the place to be – a simple, welcoming place.
Whether you’re picking up a friend from the Port Authority or rushing home via Penn Station, Pavé is open to any passerby who happens to stumble upon the inviting blue storefront on West 46th Street. It has a charm that the countless Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts that litter Midtown lack. From the exposed brick walls and wooden chairs to the mismatched doorknobs used as room coasters, Pavé exudes the same feel as a quaint European cafe. Plus, with plenty of seating, power outlets and free Wi-Fi, it’s the perfect place to hang out with friends or get some work done.
Although Pavé is relatively new, it already feels like a well-established part of the neighborhood. Upon entering, you can hear a few regular customers chatting with the staff, foreign tourists deciding which pastries to take to the hotel, and college students catching up over tea and scones. Pavé offers its customers a sense of community, bringing tourists and native New Yorkers together.
But what sets Pavé apart from the sea of other bakeries and keeps customers coming back for more is the quality of their food, which is partly due to the freshly made bread. Jonghoon Won, owner of Pavé, opened this European-style cafe to provide New Yorkers with delicious, fresh bread made using simple French baking techniques, a service he believes is disappearing from the city.
“I never imagined opening a business in New York, but I think it’s really hard to find a place now that uses fresh bread like it used to,” Vaughn said. “I believe that local residents want such bread, and if there is a need, why not provide it? »
Ian’s business partner, Jin Ahn, who owns norituha Hawaiian restaurant in the East Village, emphasized the charm of crafts like bread baking.
“Vaughn had a vision of bringing freshly baked bread to New Yorkers, and it’s a dying art,” Ahn said. “I mean, anything that’s hand-made or hand-crafted—things that we used to take for granted, artisanal—seems to be disappearing more and more lately.”
Jan’s passion for baking originates from his experience as the head pastry chef at Jungsik in Seoul and New Yorkwhere he met An, and st Bakery “Balthazar”. as a bread machine. This love for bread-making led him to the discovery Tabatier in 2015located in New Jersey, offering a large selection of breads, cakes and pastries for pickup and delivery.
Hailing from South Korea, Won said there is a Korean influence in his baked goods, such as the green tea bun on Pavé’s menu. Despite these influences, Vaughn insists that Pavé is not a Korean coffee shop—instead, it keeps things simple to make good bread. At Pavé, as at La Tabatiere, Vaughn’s main baking focus is what he calls “simple classics” like croissants and baguettes.
“Maybe there will be a stage where I reach a certain point where [where I can] probably include some variations — introduce more Korean elements into the food,” said Won. “But for now, I want to focus more on the classic stuff.”
Pavé offers many of the classic foods found in French cafes, including a wide selection of sandwiches, salads, pastries and drinks. Some of their most popular items are the fresh and flavorful burrata salad and passion fruit rolls. Like the green tea bun, the brioche is both light and not too sweet—which, according to my Korean mom, is the greatest compliment you can give a pastry.
Ahn recalls a conversation with Vaughn before opening his first bakery in New Jersey about the European aspects of his baking. He asked him why he didn’t choose to incorporate more Korean or broader Asian elements into his craft.
“I said, ‘Hey, why don’t you add some Asian accents or bring your heritage to life,'” Ahn said. “But he said, ‘Well, you know, that’s not what I want to do. I like the baguettes, I like the classic French bread, I like the bread that you get from Germany, I like that French butter, I like the flour that you find in European countries, and when you go there, you get these classic things, and classic things made with simple ingredients and done well, that’s what I want to do.’
In time, Vaughn said, he hopes to add more pastries and baked goods to Pave’s menu, such as ham and egg croissants, one of the most popular items at his New Jersey bakery. For now, Pave’s main goal is to get information out to more people. Ahn says Pavé currently works with some delivery sites like Sharebite and Grubhub, but hopes to expand to Uber Eats and DoorDash.
“Survival is number one,” Ahn said. “When visitors come back to us again and again because they think it’s something beautiful, something worthy and something worth supporting.”
Contact Jasmine Venet on [email protected]
