Looks Are Deceiving With This Paris Baguette Pastry — You're Better Off Skipping It

Head into Paris Baguette, the French-style bakery chain with origins in South Korea, and you'll be faced with displays of pretty treats waiting to pair with your go-to coffee order. To help make decisions more quickly, one of our Tasting Table team writers sampled and ranked nine pastries at Paris Baguette so you know exactly which ones to try — and which ones are better left on display. Many of Paris Baguette's pastries are inspired by traditional items you might find in France. One order, however, is more well-known in Korean coffee shops. Unfortunately, this same pastry was one of disappointment for both our writer and online taste testers.

Paris Baguette's coffee bun is supposed to be buttery and soft, offering a treat that is lightly sweetened with honey and a coffee topping. Called kopi buns in Korea, the recipe was inspired by Western bakers. Brioche buns are coated with a buttery coffee finish that turns into a coffee-flavored crust when baked in the oven. The taste of coffee is meant to be a gentle whisper, and when paired with your favorite morning or afternoon coffee, provide a satisfying treat that can be enjoyed any time of day. In the case of Paris Baguette's recipe, however, our writer noted that while the golden treat looks pretty, the plain bun needs to be cozied up with something else in order to be consumed.

Our writer wasn't the only one underwhelmed with Paris Baguette's take on a coffee bun. One TikToker gave Paris Baguette's coffee bun a 3 out of 5 rating, noting that while the bun looked promising, biting into this treat offered a taste that was described as a zero, and the order was an overall disappointment. "It's not good," scowled the reviewer on TikTok while declaring it was the first and last time the coffee bun would be ordered.

Unless you simply want a vehicle for dunking into a sweeter, frothy coffee drink, Paris Baguette has plenty of other pastry options to consider. For those who can't get buns out of their minds, the chain has also sold variations of the recipe that are made with vanilla cream piped into the center of the pastry. Other buns have been made with a red bean paste or peanut butter cream. From our writer's point of view, anything is better than the boring coffee bun.