The Abridged version:
- Pastry Cat, which opened May 1 in East Sacramento’s Sutter Park development, infuses classic French pastries with East and Southeast Asian ingredients such as matcha, miso and yuzu.
- It’s owned by Nariya Charoensupaya and Scott Doiguchi, who previously worked at high-end Bay Area restaurants.
- Pastry Cat first charmed customers with a series of pop-ups starting in 2020.
Pastry Cat was greeted with constant lines and sold-out display cases in the weekends after its soft opening began May 1. Whether customers were snared by past pop-ups or a chic social media presence, word had gotten out: This was Sacramento’s most exciting, and perhaps best, new bakery in years.
Many hotly anticipated restaurants struggle to immediately live up to the hype. Nariya Charoensupaya and Scott Doiguchi’s bakery in East Sacramento’s Sutter Park development is an exception. A fluid combination of classic French techniques and East and Southeast Asian flavors, it’s only open from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday-Sunday for now, but it has no shortage of customers.
“The response has been very positive, and we feel incredibly fortunate,” Charoensupaya wrote in an email. “Both (longtime) customers and newcomers have been very welcoming, and we are pleased to finally have a space open to everyone.”
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Born in the U.S. but raised in Thailand, Charoensupaya began baking in junior high and moved to California to attend the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena. She worked in Napa and San Francisco restaurants, including the popular Le Marais Bakery, before landing at Vina Enoteca in Palo Alto as the pastry chef.
Doiguchi was the Italian restaurant’s chef de cuisine, too, until the couple moved to the Sacramento area to be closer to his family. After Charoensupaya spent a year as Hawks’ pastry chef in Granite Bay, the couple launched the Pastry Cat brand in 2020, then spent the next six years popping up at local hot spots such as Scorpio Coffee, Majka Pizzeria & Bakery and Offbeat Coffee.
The new brick-and-mortar space leads from a partially open kitchen to a minimalist dining room full of natural light, with pastel green tables and chairs dotting a back patio. Ceramic dishware from Alma Design Studio north of Downtown Sacramento holds pastries and kitchen dishes accompanied by Olympia Coffee and Rocky’s Matcha drinks.
Charoensupaya stocks Pastry Cat with a few well-loved classics (pain au chocolat, ham-and-cheese pain Suisse) but mostly lets her creativity shine. There are Earl Grey brownies and sticky vanilla rum canelés, za’atar-Gruyère croissant buns and scones flavored with bits of strawberry, banana and passion fruit. Airy almond croissants loaded with Cara Cara orange jam (candied peels included) gave way to cherry-pistachio filling as May turned to June.
Contemporary Asian flavors, too, show up in her hazelnut hojicha financiers and miso brown butter cookies, the latter of which has been workshopped since the early days of Pastry Cat’s pop-ups. Her matcha yuzu almond cookies are must-orders for any lover of the powdered green tea, with deeply verdant centers and comforting squishiness.
“Food is my love language, and it always makes me happy when I can make food that brings a smile to people’s faces,” she wrote in an email.
Doiguchi helms Pastry Cat’s limited kitchen program. Breakfast sandwich ($14) connoisseurs will want to try Pastry Cat’s, which features a beef-and-pork patty, tangy chimichurri, cheddar cheese and a fried egg on a heavily tested biscuit that stays together remarkably well. There’s also a housemade granola bowl ($11) with seasonal jam for something lighter, or shokupan French toast ($16) with vanilla rum custard and caramelized apple for a sweeter option.
Lunch is limited to three items for now: Caesar salad ($12) flecked with nori, housemade furikake and croutons made from toasted croissant ends, Koda Farms rice bowls with Delta asparagus and mushrooms ($14) or braised pork and sunomono pickles ($17). Look for Doiguchi to adapt those menus seasonally, with emphases on French, Italian and Japanese techniques and flavors.
The 2020s have been a relatively quiet decade for Sacramento bakeries, with a couple exceptions. Pastry Cat’s similarly houred neighbor Moonbelly Bakery charmed East Sacramento residents upon opening in 2022, and Forgotten Bakery added some much-needed bagels and empanadas to the scene in 2024. But few other new brick-and-mortar concepts have gained significant traction since the COVID-19 pandemic, making Pastry Cat all the more welcome.
More dessert items from the pop-up days will eventually hit the menu, Charoensupaya said. There’s no grand opening date yet, but hours may expand as Pastry Cat gets its paws under itself.
Pastry Cat
Address: 533 53rd St., Suite 140, Sacramento
Phone: 916-520-9510
Hours: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday-Sunday, closed Monday-Thursday
Instagram: @thepastrycat916
Vegetarian/vegan options: Most of the menu is vegetarian; vegans may have a harder time.
Drinks: Olympia Coffee drinks, plus matcha and hojicha.
Reservations: None
Benjy Egel is the senior food editor at Abridged. Born and raised in the Sacramento region, he has covered its local restaurants and bars since 2018. He also writes and edits Abridged’s weekly food and drink newsletter, City of Treats.