I’m so bored by hearing about saps, waters and spirits tapped from trees and turned into food. The ongoing obsession with birch, maple and bamboo is madness. Birch, please; I don’t care how potassium-enriched it is, or how bioavailable the micronutrients. Anyone who drinks this over-hyped bouji-juice is begging to have their trust-fund decimated by a magic-bean pyramid scheme. Naturally, I was thrilled to find a birch-sap croissant at the upscale restaurant Hide, in London’s hideous Piccadilly. Pass me the chainsaw, I thought: here’s a trend that needs cutting down to size.
That’s before you consider the other half of the equation: crimes committed against croissants. Pastry-heads will be aware of the vogue for taking the simple, classic French curl and getting … experimental. Whether it’s charcoal-activated vegan croissants at London’s Coco di Mama, a fermented beef-glazed number sold at Copenhagen’s bakery 108, or the sushi-croissant hybrid available from Mr Holmes Bakehouse in San Francisco, the malpractice is international, unnecessary and deeply grievous.
At Hide, I’m handed the croissant blind, in a bag with an embossed seal, and told to hold it horizontally. People stare in the street, wondering if I’m transporting a dead pet. On revealing the precious pastry, I actually laugh. It looks like a toffee apple, or a dog toy. A tennis ball-shaped parcel, with a big stick in it. Ridiculous. Then I take a bite, and my worst fears are confirmed.
It’s good. Really good. The sap glaze crackles, yielding a perfectly laminated interior, cool and sumptuous. Aromatics fill my head, like laying on the wintergreen of a woodland floor (smoky too, as if someone vacated a barbecue earlier). There’s a baklava-quoting, emerald scatter of what could be pistachio (I was in a “stuff face first, take names later” mood). Exquisite details surface and submerge: coriander seed in the candied pecan, a little citric zephyr of orange peel. Even the “branch” is burnt liquorice root, impaling the sticky orb in campfire fashion. Earthy yet light, comforting yet mysterious, this pastry delivers.
Bad news: it probably won’t replace your commuter treat on a Friday morning. Frankly, there’s not actually much croissant for seven English pounds. But what price inspiration? Worse news is that I have to concede something to the birch-bores and their obsession with magical tree-lymph. It won’t rejuvenate your liver or turn you into a magical faun, but the sap glaze actually makes sense in context. Hide’s wünderkind chef Ollie Dabbous – no stranger to trendiness himself – has always used Nordic florals to lighten richer dishes. Living proof that sometimes hype is justified – with this invention, he’s barking up the right tree.