New Yorkers are constantly rushing. We rush through the crowds, on the subways and across the streets. One thing we do wait for, however,  is good food.  From ramen at Ippudo and burgers at Shake Shack to cereal milk ice cream on a Friday night at Milk Bar, boy, do we wait.

Recently, New Yorkers have been stopping in their tracks–sometimes for more than two hours– to get their hands on the Cronut. So we visited the home of this “croissant-doughnut hybrid” at Dominique Ansel’s Bakery to see what all the sugary fuss was about.

We arrived at the bakery at 6:30 a.m. on a Tuesday–a whole hour later than the website’s  recommended arrival time. We were  numbers 54-57 in line but the prospects looked promising. As we got closer to opening time, the line steadily increased behind us, everyone anxious to get their hands on their very own Cronuts.

At 8:48 a.m we were let inside at last, proud to finally place our orders. Before handing us our purchases, the cashier opened up the gold-colored box to show us the fresh-baked contents inside almost as if to prove they were real. We finally sat down, showed off our little indulgences on Instagram, and finally bit into one of this year’s most hyped-about foods.

Cronut

Photo by Katya Simkhovich

The Cronut tastes, well, like the doughnut-croissant marriage that it is. The flaky layers cave in when you bite down. The frosting–though drizzled on lightly–is quite sugary but balances well with the slight hint of fig. The filling is a pleasant, very lightly sweetened mascarpone mixed with tiny spoonfuls of tasty fig jam.

We had resisted the Cronut craze for so long because we doubted it would be worth the crack-of-dawn queue –and we were right to be doubtful. When you wait that long for something, you can’t help but expect it to be extraordinary. And though the Cronut was good, it certainly wasn’t extraordinary.

It is essentially semi-croissant dough masquerading as a doughnut…but it’s not entirely a doughnut either. The Cronut tries to combine the doughnut’s fluffiness and glaze with the croissant’s buttery layers of perfection but fails to live up to either standard.

On the other hand, Ansel’s ham and cheese croissant is a whole other story. Where’s the line for this?

In the meantime, we’ll stick to waiting in line for a Double Shack Burger and fries.