Croissants de France of Key West, Ltd.
For 24 years in Key West.
1984 — 2007

“A true gourmet chooses wisely, insists that food be prepared lovingly and carefully, eats with understanding and interest and rejoices over every good dish.”

Golden words from the great gastronome Brillat-Savarin. He was also convinced that a true gourmet lives longer – reason enough for us to follow in the footsteps of this famous Frenchman and to use the following pages to present modern-day gourmets with a number of culinary delicacies, all made from scratch in our kitchens.

A little History

Claude Lucas an Old School baker from Brittany, France came to Key West in the early eighties and started Croissants de France by selling the famous Kouign Amann (Celtic for “Butter Cake”) – on Mallory Square.

With the help of his friend Yolande Findlay also from Brittany, he moved to a small rented Conch house at the present address (816 Duval Street) and started selling custom cakes and Croissants - those wonderful crescent-shaped, flaky, crispy, buttery pastries that eaten with a Café au lait, are the favorite breakfast of all French.

The next step consisted in obtaining a vacant lot next door. The Bakery was expanded with a small Café where simple, European-style breakfasts and lunches - pâtés and soups, salads and sandwiches, could be served. Later the famous Crêpes and Galettes were added to the menu...and the rest is finger licking history, as our customers tend to say.

In 2000 Patrick Gossweiler a Swiss-French bought Croissants de France. During the next two years the “Old Lady” as we call her affectionately went gone through a complete “face lifting”. The first returns on this work were the Award of the Chamber of Commerce for efforts in the beautification of Key West and a spontaneous affluence of new customers.

…and then came the fateful year 2005...

On Valentine’s Day February 14, 2005 and electrical fire broke out inside one of the walls and quickly spread throughout the building ravaging everything in its passage.
Thanks to the alertness of a passing taxi driver and the incredibly quick response of the Key West Fire Department the blaze did not engulf other buildings. The competent to work and professionalism of these firefighters was awesome.

Nevertheless the building had to be declared a total loss and Croissants de France was forced to find a temporary shelter very quickly. It is with a grateful heart that I would like to thank the people of Key West for their support in these difficult times.

I hope I will be forgiven for not thanking everybody personally who spontaneously helped solving the myriad tasks that suddenly assailed us, but I had to accept the demands for brevity on this site. So I will just say thanks to Key West, city full of wonderful and generous people.

The task was made even more daunting as we had to rebuild through four major hurricanes. Dennis, Katrina and Rita where bad enough but it was Wilma that really took the cake – no pun intended. Everything we salvaged from the fire, drowned in the flooding that Wilma bestowed upon us. And so we made many new friends while working together cleaning or standing in line at FEMA and SBA stands.

What's left afer clearing the rubble. looking like a real place	Finally the framing is in place.....	....Croissants starts looking like a real place.
The new oven has arrived...7, 2006	...the shop gets its mural again	... and finally we reopened on Sept 7, 2006!