“The Warner” at 1042 Chapel Street is a six-story stack of Queen Anne architecture built in 1892 as swanky private housing for Yale students. The first-floor retail spaces retain their original supermodel dimensions (towering, svelte) and ornamental period touches (display windows, crown molding). This building has been a lot of things to a lot of New Haven residents over the years—boarding house, billiard hall, a canary yellow purveyor of Provençal bath products. But for the last few years the storefront has been a gap in Chapel Street’s smile.
Enter local entrepreneurs Alexander Clark and Kimberly Pedrick. Clark believes “people judge a city by its cultural capital,” and he wants New Haven to be ready for its close-up. Between the two of them, they own a cluster of Chapel Street’s retail and dining highlights. Pedrick founded two neighboring boutiques, idiom and Dwell; more recently, Clark acquired Zinc and, most germane to this article, Union League, the storied French brasserie right across Sherman Alley from The Warner.
Now Clark and Pedrick have expanded that story with co-venture Union League Pâtisserie, launched last month. A banquet kitchen on the second floor of the main Union League restaurant has been renovated into a full-on pastry command center with a dedicated staff, servicing the pâtisserie’s cases as well as the dessert menus downstairs and a block away at Zinc. While the bulk of the baking happens before dawn, the ovens go all day so the cases next door, open Wednesday through Sunday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., stay stocked. Local ingredients are used when possible; for example, dairy products from Guardians Farm in Southbury have a short journey from cow to kitchen, reach their apotheosis as crème pâtissière, get squirted into a coffee eclair, then take an even shorter trip across the alleyway and through the doors of 1042. Executive chef Olivier Durand, a classically trained pastry chef and veteran of Union League’s kitchen, oversees every culinary detail.
As for the broader design, that was right up Pedrick’s alley. Au revoir, canary yellow. Bonjour, compelling blue, somewhere between Titian and Tiffany—a “Paris blue,” Pedrick says. Walking in is a little like entering a Jordan almond. And what a sweet pocket universe awaits.
On recent visits, the staff was bustling and friendly and running through desserts at an alarming clip. (Not to worry: The empty tray labeled “Chocolate Croissants” was restocked with warm ones as I waited). Everyone ahead of me in line seemed to be procuring hostess gifts en route to chic dinner parties, though this impression was created as much by the elegant Paris-blue boxes they received as by the clientele themselves. There isn’t much seating, but if you’re lucky enough to snag the white marble table in the front window, you can prolong your interlude in this little blue Paris, perhaps sipping a beverage: Evian, Perrier, Orangina, teas by Damman Frères, and the kinds of coffees you’d find at a restaurant with a Michelin star or two.
Most every confection on the menu is designed to deliver a few transportive bites—this isn’t Cinnabon—so you might be able to take on more than one, especially if accompanied by a friend who understands sampler symbiosis: you get some bites, I get some bites. Start with the Canele ($3.25), a luscious Barbie bundt cake stiff with sugar glaze on the outside. Immediately regret that the other half is promised to your friend. Move on to the Pistachio Madeleine ($2.25), another contrast in textures between the cakelet and the nuts, perhaps a bit dry if you don’t take Proust’s recommendation to pair with tea. Next up, the Financier ($2.75): firm but not too dense, studded with apricots, can be stacked in the manner of gold bars at your next chic dinner party.
Take a breath. We still haven’t had any chocolate. The Chocolate-Chocolate Cookie ($3.75) is a giant of the genre, rich but not oversweet. If saying “cookie” breaks your Parisian fantasy, by all means skip it in favor of the delightful Chocolate Bouchon ($4.75), a brownie’s more glamorous Gallic cousin. Picking a favorite in this category will require further research, but the frontrunner is the Chocolate Pave ($9.00). This multi-layered, multi-textured dessert marries chocolate with hazelnut so beautifully it may ruin you for the palm-oil glop in your Nutella jar. The first forkful will have you closing your eyes to be alone with it.
For many New Haveners, Union League restaurant is not exactly the local pub. If you’ve had the pleasure, it may have been for a special occasion: a wedding, a graduation. The genius of the Union League Pâtisserie is that it delivers decadence in miniature: no life crossroads or expense account required. If you are downtown, you can spontaneously drop out of your errands and into a pocket of mindful pleasure, a theme-clarifying dream ballet between Act I and II of your day. And when you do exit to the street, carry that Paris blue box with the confidence of someone who knows a dozen fashionable ways of tying a scarf.
Written by Sarah Harris Wallman. Image 1 (featuring Alexander Clark and Kimberly Pedrick) and image 3 (featuring the tarte case) sourced from @unionleaguepatisserie. Image 2 (featuring the shop exterior), image 4 (featuring a pair of the Caneles and a Lemon Meringue Tarte) and 5 (featuring the Paris blue box on the marbled white table) photographed by Sarah Harris Wallman.
