Blue Door Cafe & Bakery Chases Perfection, One Croissant at a Time

A retired U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer, Michael Bruno has high expectations for his Blue Door Cafe & Bakery in Cuyahoga Falls. So, when he traveled to France in 2024 and discovered the croissants in Paris were better than his cafe’s, he came home and reworked the recipe to use 50 percent more butter. The key ingredient is 83 percent butterfat European-style butter.

Now? “Our croissants are as good as Paris,” says the owner of the Blue Door, which makes all of its bakery items fresh daily.

After studying at the French pastry arts program L’Académie de Cuisine — and obtaining European artisanal baking equipment — he opened the Blue Door in 2009. Today, with over 50 employees serving the up to 65-seat restaurant, Bruno uses his training to run the Blue Door with a strong focus on teaching, communication and quality.

“We have [over] 50 employees because we make everything from scratch, whether it’s a croissant, an English muffin, a sourdough, a baguette, you name it — pasta, biscuits,” Bruno says. “When we had a Michelin chef in here … he said, Nobody uses these ingredients — and he’s cooked all over the world.”

To prep more efficiently, Bruno strategically reorganized the menu into specials and classics, with the latter including the smoked New Zealand king salmon and eggs ($25). To craft it, cooks halve a house-made croissant and sear it on the flattop, caramelizing the buttery layers, then slather it with garlic and dill cream cheese. They layer on salmon smoked on mesquite wood and make creamy local cage-free chive scrambled eggs, topping the dish with an onion caper relish.

“This is actually a Gordon Ramsay-inspired dish. We adjusted it a little bit. We made it better,” Bruno says. “They’re European-style scrambled eggs … before you’re done scrambling, you add heavy cream to it, so that they stop cooking and stay creamy.”

Inspired by how Ramsay filled a croissant with pastry cream, the bananas foster French toast ($24) makes that concept even more decadent. It involves preparing the croissant like French toast and placing it over vanilla and Jamaican dark rum rice pudding — topping it with butter, rum sauteed bananas and whipped cream with chunks of melty chocolate in it.

“It’s like the best bread pudding you’re ever going to have because it’s a croissant soaked in custard, and it has pastry cream inside,” Bruno says.

Prompted by Bruno’s time being stationed in Southern California, the huevos rancheros Baja ($36) dish is expertly prepared with certified Angus skirt steak, blackened Gulf shrimp, organic refried beans, Spanish rice, melted chihuahua cheese, house-made hot sauce, avocado, queso fresco and local sunny side-up eggs on house corn tortillas made from stone-ground masa.

Bruno’s former Michelin chef came up with elements of the lobsterman’s breakfast ($38) — house-made maple sausage and melted leek ragout with butter-poached Maine lobster and sunny side-up eggs over house-baked buttermilk biscuits, avocado, crispy Berkshire bacon crumbles, hollandaise and potatoes.

For a beverage, order the mocha ($5.50) made with double Angel Falls Coffee Co. espresso and chocolate milk crafted with ground-up 70 percent dark chocolate for extra richness.

Return for elevated yet approachable dinner dishes such as chicken Parmesan crafted with house-made breadcrumbs, house-made marinara and local chicken that’s farm-raised without antibiotics or hormones.

Bruno is constantly making improvements. Dinner chef Jimmy Pintiello recently started. Bruno hopes to expand the bakery. He hears from customers that the food is better than they’ve had anywhere. But Bruno is chasing the pinnacle of success.

“It’s damn good now. It’s gonna keep getting better,” he says. “I want a Michelin Star.”

1970 State Road, Cuyahoga Falls, 330-926-9774, bluedoorcafebakery.com