KANSAS CITY, MO — Just across the street from Washington Square Park in New Orleans’ Faubourg Marigny neighborhood sits Ayu Bakehouse. Despite its Frenchmen Street location — an area known as the “locals’ Bourbon Street” — the bakery serves as an oasis of sorts for residents and tourists looking for from-scratch baked goods, a light lunch or a charismatic coffee bar.
“The park acts as a type of filter between the neighborhood and vibrant Frenchmen Street,” said Kelly Jacques, head chef, who co-owns the bakery with Samantha (Sam) Weiss. “We’re in the sweet spot with this location. It’s easy to find parking, and we’re close to the French Quarter and the more touristy areas. It’s the best of both worlds.”
A one-of-a-kind place
Ayu opened in 2022, and everything about it, from its historic building to the open kitchen to the intentionally classic-eclectic menu, was designed with the NOLA vibe in mind.
“In the early stages, one of the questions we asked ourselves was, ‘How do we make sense of a bakery being on Frenchmen Street, the nightlife capital of the world?’” Kelly said. “Two blocks down are all the live performances of the jazz clubs and everything. The open kitchen is our version of a New Orleans live performance.”
In keeping with the city’s laid-back personality, Ayu’s menu stays fairly static; the bakery doesn’t chase trends or reset with every season. Classics such as croissants, pain au chocolat, cinnamon rolls and sourdough bread are balanced with more adventurous sweet goods such as the Black Sesame Passion Fruit Danish and savory croissant-based pastries like the Boudin Boy and Shroom Boom.
“Our signature products are the Kaya bun, which is a top seller, the Muffaletta Breadstick, and our baguettes and house sourdough,” said Ayu’s head pastry chef Lauren Boudreaux, who studied at Johnson & Wales. “We stick with our classics, but sometimes we’ll add some flair here and there.”
Adding the Ayu twist
That said, Kelly and Sam like to keep the bakery case fresh and exciting, seizing opportunities to create limited-time items that lean into local seasonal produce such as figs and peaches. The bakery is known for adding an Ayu spin to holiday classics like Thanksgiving pies and the beloved King Cake.
“I could just pull out some classic recipes and do the pie that everybody grew up with, but we want to put our mark on it,” Kelly said. “It doesn’t feel satisfying to just do a classic as it’s always been done. Sometimes we’ll use a croissant dough for the pie shell because you still get that flakiness. It uses a product we’re already working with, so we don’t have to mix another dough.”
About that King Cake … is a NOLA bakery really a NOLA bakery if it doesn’t have its own version of this traditional baked good? During festival season — early January through Fat Tuesday in February — Ayu offers three varieties: the Croissant City Classic King Cake, which Food Network ranked one of the top 10 best sweet goods; the Babka King Cake; and a limited-time special edition King Cake. For instance, last year the bakery collaborated with local cocktail bar Cure on a Vieux Carre King Cake.
“The traditional King Cake stays the same every year, but we also offer a limited-edition version, as well as one inspired by our time in New York,” Sam said. “It’s one of our rotating menu items.”
Menu changes and product development typically start with the team talking about what they’d like to add or remove, based on seasonality or sales figures. From those conversations, Lauren often takes the lead on R&D, determining production feasibility before diving into development.
“I usually start backward, figuring out how the idea could work in production and how it could work in the case,” she said. “I don’t always get to see a product through from start to finish, so if I can start backward, I can make production easier for the team.”
Keeping the production parameters in mind, the team starts developing the concept, offering informal tastings during the process, with the back-and-forth continuing until it’s deemed menu-worthy.
“When we taste a new concept, we consider whether we want to keep going back for more or if we’re satisfied with one bite,” Kelly explained. “It’s indicative of the larger experience. We don’t want to make anything just to make it. If we’re going to put something new on the menu, I want it to feel like, ‘Oh, I’ve not had that before,’ or ‘I’ve not had it like this before.’ With limited space, every product has to earn its spot on the counter.”
Kelly and Sam oversee back-of-house and front-of-house, respectively, and have carved distinct lanes when it comes to evaluating menu changes or adding new items.
“I’m more focused on the flavor and the final look of the products,” Sam said. “Kelly’s more focused on how we can produce them consistently at scale.”
All production — an average of 1,000 pieces a day across retail, wholesale and online orders — happens in about 1,000 square feet of a U-shaped galley kitchen. Part of the “live performance” is how seamlessly team members move around in the small space.
“Our movements are naturally choreographed,” Kelly noted. “That’s important when you’re baking at scale, especially when we hit the busy season, like King Cake season. There’s no time to waste when we are at full clip. Everyone on a dough knows what their movement is going to be.”
This story has been adapted from the September | Q3 2026 Craft to Crumb mini-mag. Read the digital issue here.
