Credit: STEVIE SHAO

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STEVIE SHAO

The first thing to know about the croissants at Saboteur Bakery is that you should never, under any circumstances, eat one over your lap without some kind of napkin coverage.

I learned this last winter on a day trip to Bremerton. My companion and I took our pastries to go (there’s no seating at the bakery), and I was riding shotgun in the car. I took the ham-and-cheese croissant out of the bag, and as soon as I bit into it, my lap was covered in pastry flakes.

Saboteur and its croissants are the creation of Matt Tinder, a pastry chef who worked at Michelin-starred restaurants Coi and the Restaurant at Meadowood in California before he and business partner Kate Giuggio decamped north to Bremerton, a navy town on the Kitsap Peninsula known less for its food scene than for its shipyard and that one MxPx song from the 1990s. This bakery, however, could change that.

Katie Herzog is a former staff writer at The Stranger.