{"id":143165,"date":"2026-01-21T14:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/143165\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T14:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:30:09","slug":"the-godmother-of-asian-pastries-is-still-selling-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/143165\/","title":{"rendered":"The godmother of Asian pastries is still selling out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every February, there\u2019s a stampede to get hold of B. Patisserie\u2019s Lunar New Year specials \u2014 and it\u2019s no different for the year of the horse. Preorders (opens in new tab)<\/a> for Chinese-inspired pastries opened last week on Tock, and the accompanying announcement on the bakery\u2019s Instagram was flooded with 2,582 likes. There has been FOMO angst about the new savory boxes selling out for the first week of pickups.<\/p>\n

But in good news, B. Patisserie is no longer the only game in town. European-style pastries infused with Asian flavors are everywhere in San Francisco. Breadbelly<\/a>, Jina Bakes, Bake Sum, and Sol Bakery have helped make ube and red bean feel as familiar as frangipane and chocolate. I\u2019ve fallen<\/a> hard for a pandan-coconut canel\u00e9 from the pop-up Zoul\u00e9 (opens in new tab)<\/a>, a kinako-dusted mochi croissant from Jina Bakes, and a coconut scroll from Grand Opening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, amid the Asian pastry craze, let us praise B. Patisserie co-owner and chef Belinda Leong, the city\u2019s undisputed black-sesame godmother.<\/p>\n

Since opening the Lower Pacific Heights bakery in 2013 with French baker Michel Suas, Leong has riffed on milk-tea cakes and pomelo parfaits, almond jelly and mango tapioca. Most famously, she infused Chinese flavors into the flaky layers of her iconic kouign-amann (or KA, if you\u2019re cool like that).<\/p>\n

I caught Leong in the calm before the annual sugar storm. Soon enough, she and her team will begin arriving at the bakery at midnight to start preparing for Lunar New Year. If this holiday is like the last one, she has a lot of KAs ahead of her \u2014 about 20,000 of them.<\/p>\n

During most of the year, B. Patisserie is a very European bakery. What was the impetus to launch the Lunar New Year specials in 2014?<\/p>\n

Well, our customer base is like 60% Asian. When we started, my manager was Chinese, and it was her idea. We started to think about all the desserts we could create. And being Chinese myself, I love Chinese desserts as opposed to American or French.<\/p>\n

Where did your flavor inspirations come from?<\/p>\n

Childhood. I grew up in the Richmond but went to school in Chinatown until I was in eighth grade. My parents have a store there called Wycen (opens in new tab)<\/a>, where they sell Chinese sausage. My uncle used to own a restaurant there called Oriental Pearl, where we\u2019d go and get mango pudding. I also loved the glutinous rice balls with black sesame in syrup \u2014 so that was the first one that we started with. And we were like, how can we do a black sesame version of a kouign-amann?<\/p>\n

\"\"B Patisserie\u2019s 2025 Lunar New Year kouign-amann | Source: Lauren Saria<\/p>\n

So you come from food-industry stock.<\/p>\n

Yeah, when I started doing pop-ups 14 years ago while I was still working at Manresa [the three-Michelin starred restaurant in Los Gatos], I was baking in my parents\u2019 factory in San Leandro.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What new items are cooking up this year? <\/p>\n

We\u2019re doing a play on nian gao, a brown-sugar glutinous rice cake, which is traditional for Chinese New Year. I make sure to say it\u2019s \u201cour version,\u201d because people might compare it, and I hate that. Our take is more like a butter mochi.<\/p>\n

I hear you\u2019re doing a savory box for the first time.<\/p>\n

Yes, we\u2019ve never done it. It will include a kouign-amann made with Yank Sing\u2019s hot sauce, which is one of the best, but it hasn\u2019t been available for like 10 years. We\u2019ll also sell the hot sauce.<\/p>\n

What does it feel like to see so many pastry chefs using Chinese flavors now?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really cool because it\u2019s my culture, but everyone\u2019s doing it with their own style. Even my friend Nico [Delaroque] from Maison Nico is \u2014 we worked at Manresa together. I saw he did a galette de rois with black sesame. I was like, \u201cOh, that\u2019s cool! I hadn\u2019t seen that idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

What did your parents think when you started all this?<\/p>\n

They were like, \u201cAre you crazy? You sell that mango pudding for $8?\u201d And I was like, \u201cYeah, people buy it.\u201d But you know, it\u2019s funny. Compared to other bakeries, we\u2019re still pretty inexpensive.<\/p>\n