A Plan to Expand the Union Square Business Improvement District

Steak Frites on 16th St., which morphed into Union Prime, is morphing back into Steak Frites. Go figure

Now baking at 64 University Place is Papa d’Amour, the new bakery from celebrated pastry master Dominique Ansel. It’s gonna be fancy. Here’s New York magazine’s take:

On a recent afternoon inside the kitchen that will open as Papa d’Amour later this month, the pastry chef Dominique Ansel was holding a spoonful of tomato-tinted scrambled eggs for the consideration of his wife, Amy Ma. “White pepper,” she said after trying it. “That’s not a bad thing.” She explained that Ansel will add vermicelli to the eggs to soak up any excess moisture so the mixture can then be stuffed inside a soft, steamed bao bun, which — because this is from the same chef who invented the Cronut all those years ago — will be folded in the shape of a croissant.

A single pastry that manages to reference a dim-sum staple, French patisserie, and the tomato-egg stir-fry that Ma’s mother cooked for her at home in Taiwan is but one of the many complex, globally collaged items on the menu of Papa d’Amour, which is Ansel’s “exploration” of Asian bread culture, as he puts it. More than that, it is a manifestation of love for his two children (the enfants to his papa) where customers will be able to find loaves of shokupan and sandwiches made on that Japanese milk bread (plain or laminated); pretzel-salt-crusted Chinese custard tarts; and a banana bread Malay cake derived not from the humble American home-baking staple but of Malaysia’s more elegant, fluffy, steamed sponge cake.

The Papa is particularly excited about a scallion-basil “blossom,” which, you’d never guess unless he told you, is his take on a Taiwanese scallion pancake. “I wanted something I can pull apart,” he says. He’d seen the way the pancake’s dough is fluffed by hand to give it a flaky, almost shredded surface and a chewy middle and wanted to come up with something that mimics that interplay. He was trained in France, so his mind went to two kinds of brioche: a regular version to encase the scallion component in the middle and a laminated, layered crown to encourage ripping.

After all the posts here about the imminent 14th St. Busway project, it died, perhaps because residents made such a fuss.

As of May 23, it’s illegal to smoke in Union Sq. Park. Smokers will be fined $50. Additionally, going forward only 18 art vendors per day will be allowed to set up shop. Both these rules seem utterly unenforceable, so we shall see.

Mark your calendars for October 6, when beer drinking comes to Union Square Park at Torch and Crown in the northern plaza.