Inside Hani's, the Bakery New Yorkers Are Obsessed With
An interview with Shilpa Uskokovic, co-creator of Hani's Bakery, editor and recipe developer.
Make Yourself at Home is a series of conversations with the people behind your favorite food, drinks, movements and destinations — the experts who have mastered the art of making you feel like you’re right where you belong.
Bakery culture is stronger than ever in New York. I texted some friends and asked them about their favorite bakery in the city, and two people whose taste I trust — Jake Cohen and Ayaka Guido — picked Hani’s. And I don’t blame them.
After years of dreaming, culinary power couple Shilpa Uskokovic and Miro Uskokovic brought their vision to life with Hani’s Bakery. Named in honor of Miro’s mother, the bakery blends the couple’s pastry expertise — Shilpa as a senior food editor at Bon Appétit who has worked at Michelin-starred restaurants and Miro with an impressive background, including a decade as the executive pastry chef of Gramercy Tavern — into a warm and welcoming space that already has a massive fanbase. With seasonal flavors, a cozy 12-seat layout, and a takeout window for your morning pastry fix, the bakery is quickly becoming an East Village obsession.
I talked to Shilpa about starting the day before the sun rises, getting creative with combining flavors and the sweet legacy behind the bakery’s name.
The origin story: Hani’s is built on a child’s silent promise to his mother. Miro’s mom, Hani, as he called her, was the family baker, marking each of her three children’s birthdays with one, two (sometimes three!) homemade cakes, baking after-school treats every day, making piglet shaped breads for Easter, or elaborate layer cakes on a Tuesday night just because. She loved sweets and she loved to bake. It was her dream to have her own bakery in their hometown of Vrbas, in what was formerly called Yugoslavia. What happened instead was a war, followed by a diagnosis of terminal cancer. As her youngest child and the one who devotedly followed his mother’s every movement through the kitchen and around the farm during his childhood, Miro was devastated. He swore then that one day he would gift his mother the bakery she always wanted. It may be halfway across the world from where the dream originated, but Hani’s today exists in honor of his mother.
The early bird gets the pastry: We start the day at 4:30am when our first bakers come in to proof and bake off our morning pastries like morning buns, cinnamon buns, pigs in a blanket, savory pinwheels and flatbreads.
At 6am, our next round of bakers begin making batters, browning butter, and laminating doughs based on the production list.
As it gets closer to opening (we open at 7:30am on the weekday and 8am on the weekends), one or two of our pastry cooks finish the pastries that go in the case. This involves slicing loaf cakes, piping meringue on tarts, adding quenelles of creme fraiche on teacakes, cutting fruit, frosting layer cakes, glazing cinnamon buns, dusting powdered sugar on coffee cakes. Our FOH (front of house) team does a final sweep of the space, grinds coffee beans, checks the register, and fills our water carafes in time to greet our first guests.
The ovens are always on at Hani's. We continue to bake batches of cinnamon buns and cookies throughout the day just to keep up with demand but we also have to stop at some point so we can actually bake all of our other pastries. We take it in turns to have family meal, which might be braised tofu or chickpea tagine, or glazed meatballs and fries, depending on the day. In the afternoon and into the evening, we bake and stack our layer cakes, shape our laminated pastries, and continue producing doughs and batters for the next day or so. We're generally done by 10pm.
Creativity is key: Through his career, most notably during his decade long tenure as executive pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern, Miro has come to be known for his thoughtful and creative approach to flavor. Whether it’s combining black poppy seeds with sour cherries, tomatoes with peaches, or strawberry with passion fruit (like in our croissant tart), adding sesame seed brittle to otherwise familiar PB&J, topping lemon meringue tarts with sumac to continue the through line of tartness — his refined, audacious, flavor-first approach defines all the desserts at Hani’s.
Building community: When we were building out the space, it was important for us to have a good bit of seating because we wanted to create a warm, welcoming oasis where people could sit down and spend a minute either by themselves or with a few friends. Each week, it makes us a little emotional to see all the different people that walk through Hani's.
Parents with tiny babies strapped to their chests generally come in the early morning hours, quietly disassociating over a coffee and cinnamon bun. Groups of six crowd into a booth and split 8 pastries amongst themselves. Couples twine their feet under the table and feed each other cake. Friends meet up for the first time in a long while, texting that they're "five minutes away, can you order a matcha?” Tourists, from another state, from across the world. Guests who live down the block. Guests who run (run!) down from the Upper East Side or up from Brooklyn. The ones who pass by after work or picking up their kids from school. The ones who stop in before work, and get an extra cookie for their colleague. We feel incredibly lucky to bear witness to these moments in time.
The future of New York’s bakery scene: I suspect we might see a lot more regional baking, or bakeries with a very defined sense of place.
In much the same way that restaurants that were broadly classified as Indian or Chinese or Thai in the past have given way to hyper regional, specialized establishments that showcase food from Tamil Nadu or Kerala or Northern Thailand or the Sichuan province, I reckon bakeries will follow suit.
We already see it with bakeries like Bánh by Lauren (Vietnamese) or Kora (Filipino) or Masa Madre (Latin American).
Bakeries the Hani’s team loves: We love La Cabra (if you haven't had the canelé at La Cabra, what are you even doing?), Lysee, Elbow Bakery, Lady Wong, and Radio Bakery. And I sometimes go to Levain for a cookie because that never gets old.
Advice for aspiring bakery owners: In a city that is spoiled for choice, you can still build your own loyal customer base. Try to find your footing, focus on what you do best — whether that’s cakes or croissants or Italian or Indian inspired baking — and double down. Build and maintain the kind of space you want to go to yourself and your guests will come.
Thank you for making yourself at home. I hope you love reading this newsletter as much as I love writing it.