This Old-School Savory French Pastry Is Making a Comeback

Chef Colby Rasavong stacked together a seared half-pound beef patty, pickled green tomatoes, and a slab of Velveeta. But instead of using a bun to transfer those classic American flavors from hand to mouth, he wrapped the ensemble first in a crèpe and then sesame-flecked puff pastry, which he baked until golden and sauced with bacon jus. 

Of all the millions of cheeseburger variations on the planet, Rasavong’s happy hour special at Bad Idea in Nashville might well be the very first cheeseburger pithivier.   

The Nashville chef first encountered the French-style pastry while opening The Continental with Sean Brock. “There’s a lot of skill, finesse, and artwork that goes into building a pithivier,” says Rasavong. “When you encase something in pastry, and it’s a protein, you only get one shot. It’s either raw, right, or wrong.” 

Across the country, pithiviers are having a moment on restaurant menus. They’re taking on novel formats and fillings. Their good looks have stolen the show on Instagram, and they’re giving chefs a shot at proving their old-school technique bonafides. 

At Bad Idea, pithiviers reflect Rasavong’s playful Lao-meets-French cooking. He has prepared a pithivier filled with nam prik-laced scallop mousseline, and a vegetarian khao soi variation with red curry, vermicelli, mushrooms, and cabbage. In summer, he piled peak season tomatoes and Boursin-style herbed cheese into a cozy den of puff pastry.

For the opening menu of New York City’s Time and Tide, Danny Garcia cured halibut in kombu for 24 hours and swaddled the fillets with fish mousseline, duxelles of mushrooms and spinach, a spinach crépe, and puff pastry. At Francie, also in New York, Chris Cipollone packs the flavors of duck à l’orange into a pithivier, and San Francisco Chef Nicolas Delaroque sells his spiraled duck and sausage pithivier by the whole ($50) or half ($25) dome at trés French Maison Nico.

At Obélix in Chicago, Nathan Kim layered luxury-upon-luxury with a  squab, foie gras, and truffle-pistachio pithivier, and for the wine bar at Emeril’s in  New Orleans, E.J. Lagasse tapped two Southern staples for his pithivier: red snapper and buttermilk dill sauce (aka ranch dressing). 

What exactly is a pithivier? 

Pithiviers hail from a French city of the same name, located about 50 miles south of Paris. Though there’s a traditional almond cream-filled pithivier, in America, savory versions dominate. “To me a pithivier is usually domed and scored. There’s typically a vent punched out of the top,” says Rasavong. “Those are the visual cues I’m looking for.”

Puff pastry is essential. Even though the blood pudding pie at My Loup in Philadelphia from Alex Kemp and 2023 F&W Best New Chef Amanda Shulman looks a whole helluva like a pithivier, with its layers of blood sausage and apples, Kemp says it’s merely pie — albeit a delicious one. “It’s made with a short crust,” he says. 

“Pithivier is an aesthetic,” adds Ron McKinlay. 

McKinlay led the kitchen of Canoe in Toronto for nearly eight years and ran seasonal pithivier specials whenever he had the chance. With a small production area, and 350 covers a day, the pastry main course required too much labor and storage space for a full-time spot on his menu. McKinlay would prepare a braise and farce, wrap the meat parcel in puff pastry one day before service, brush on several coats of egg yolk, and finally score the dough to achieve a fluted look. That’s about three days of work, he confirmed. 

McKinlay got the word out about his pithiviers via Instagram, teasing the dish sliced down the center to show off his intricate technique, and he never failed to sell out. He also collaborated with Mold Brothers to design a pithivier kit to expedite construction and recently used the 3D-printed molds to build rabbit-foie gras pithiviers for a Charlie Trotter tribute dinner, riffing off the iconic chef’s recipe for wild Scottish hare. Even after years of pithivier devotion, McKinlay still fears that his proteins won’t be to a perfect mid-rare, or that too much liquid will pool inside, rendering the pastry soggy.  

“With pithiviers, it’s the craftsmanship behind it, that aha moment when you finally cut into it, and you either really messed it up or it’s perfect,” says McKinlay, who left Canoe earlier this year. 

All pithiviers are pies 

Though pithiviers regularly appear on the menu at Lord’s in New York City, 2023 F&W Best New Chef Ed Szymanski doesn’t fuss with French nomenclature. He simply calls them pie. “Pies are one example where the English have the French beat when it comes to cuisine. Our range of meat pies is very impressive,” says Szymanski, who originally hails from London. “Pithivier is just a fancy word for pie, but it’s as comforting and satisfying as an entrée can be.”

Sure, he concedes, pithiviers are more technical than saucy pasties or short crust-topped pot pies. Chefs must finely calibrate a pithiver’s farce. Their filling can neither be too wet nor too dry, and you need a deft hand to score them properly. They are round. “All pithiviers are pies, but not all pies are pithiviers,” says Szymanski, whose most recent version packaged pork and black truffle, served alongside buttery savoy cabbage and Calvados sauce.

A loose interpretation of the form prevails at 2016 F&W Best New Chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske’s New York City restaurant Wildair. The chefs serve a pithivier that more closely resembles a hot mille feuille. “It’s not really a pithivier,” confesses Stone. “I spent a lot of time cooking in France. I’m a stickler for language.” 

Still, calling Wildair’s puff-pastry-with-savory-filling a pithivier made sense to Stone in the context of the restaurant. Most guests, he says, have at least vague understanding of a classic pithivier, and the name sells. Depending on the season, they have filled their “pithivier” with broccoli rabe, Alpine-style cheese, and Calabrian chile jam. Another vegetarian version combined kimchi and cheese.

The format, baked eight at a time on a sheet tray, is easier to execute in a tiny kitchen, and the rectangular shape eliminates wasted dough. “It’s a creative approach, but it’s smart to stop and think about all the little details and how our restaurant works,” says Stone. “The word pithivier gets the idea across, usually, of what you’re gonna get.”

In the first weeks of spring, that meant cutting through a mass of flaky pastry and into alternating slices of jambon de Paris and melty Comté. A cook had squiggled spicy egg yolk sauce, a mayonnaise by another name, on top. 

Of all the millions of ham sandwich variations on the planet, it might have been the first to be called a pithivier.