Dominique Ansel Relocates West Village Kitchen to Giant Flatiron Headquarters

Famed pastry chef Dominique Ansel is making drastic moves in the middle of the pandemic. Ansel and partner Amy Ma are permanently shutting down Dominique Ansel Kitchen — the company’s five-year-old production facility in the West Village — and moving operations to a much bigger location in Flatiron, near Madison Square Park, Ma tells Eater.

The move, Ma says, will allow the company to expand in multiple ways, including potentially offering cooking classes, nationwide shipping, and a bread program for the first time from the new headquarters.

“We’ve always wanted to have a larger production kitchen,” Ma says of the new, 4,000 square-foot space. The former kitchen in the West Village was a commercial shop split between three levels, and Ansel and Ma never felt that it was safe or comfortable enough to launch some of the initiatives that they wanted, like hosting cooking demonstrations.

Customers who visited the West Village location during its run could find a wider variety of desserts and baked goods than what was available in Ansel’s original, tiny bakery in Soho, including soft serve ice cream and matcha beignets. Ansel also hosted regular events like U.P., a dessert-focused tasting menu, and Pie Night, an annual hour-long extravaganza where diners could eat unlimited pie slices, from the West Village kitchen. The company says all the kitchen activities will be relocated to the new shop.

The chef’s legendary cronut, however, is only sold out of the company’s original bakery on Spring Street in Soho. That shop has remained open throughout the pandemic.

Ma declined to publicly release the exact location of the new Flatiron space at this time.

“It’s the one thing that we’re looking forward to in this time,” Ma says of the move. “It’ll be nice to be able to bring back more of the team.”

Ansel and Ma plan to open the new location by the end of the year.