Food & Drink
Review: Pastry Shop La Cosette Brings a Slice of Paris and Tunisia to Locust Point
Aside from the pretty tarts, quiches, croissants, and cakes, what makes the shop truly special is the family that runs it.
Walk into La Cosette, a pastry shop in a Locust Point corner rowhouse—which recently reopened after taking a brief hiatus—and you’ll get a view of a conventional French-style bakery: a case loaded with pretty desserts and pastries fronting a tiny kitchen filled with coffee paraphernalia, a tidy oven, and jars of cookies.
But look a bit further and you’ll find what makes La Cosette truly special, in the form of the small woman at the stove flipping crepes and brewing Turkish coffee in a beautiful metal pot.
Ahlem Kechrid and her family, who own and operate La Cosette, opened the shop in November of 2023, after Ahlem’s son Rafik, to hear him tell it, got tired of eating pastries that weren’t as good as his mother’s.
“Do you know where I go to get a fruit tart? D.C.,” Rafik told his mother, the central argument for convincing his parents to open a bakery in Baltimore.
The Kechrid family is from Tunisia, where Ahlem ran a catering business before they all immigrated to Maryland in 2005. Rafik went to UMBC and now runs Next Level Soccer, a nonprofit soccer academy in Baltimore; Rafik’s father, Faouzi, is a retired veterinarian; Ahlem taught French and biology before also retiring.
Her retirement didn’t last long, as she now gets up at 4 a.m. to make pistachio croissants, individual chocolate hazelnut cakes, and, yes, fruit tarts. (Rafik and Faouzi help manage the front of the house.)
Those little fruit tarts are classic pastries built of pâte sucrée, silky custard, and glazed fresh berries. Filling the shelves next to them is a lovely library of lemon tarts, individual quiches, almond croissants, tiny cappuccino chocolate cakes, and more, including biscotti, cookies, muffins, and sandwiches.
While the genre is decidedly French—though Tunisia gained independence in 1956, it was colonized by France and thus has a long history of excellent French patisserie—Ahlem excels when she uses fruit and nuts, particularly pistachios.
Do not leave without ordering her pistachio fondant, a little cake filled with a marzipan-like pistachio paste. It’s quite rich, yet not cloying or overly sweet, and it is best enjoyed with a cup of Turkish coffee, which Ahlem makes to order in a traditional metal pot, called a zazwa in Tunisia.
And what she’ll add to the pot, along with the very finely ground coffee that’s the hallmark of the drink, is a small pour from a big jug of orange-flower water, which she also makes herself and which, says her son, perfumes her kitchen for days. That coffee does some excellent perfuming as well and makes La Cosette a truly lovely place to stop for breakfast.
It doesn’t hurt that across the street from the pastry shop is a branch of Ekiben, whose devotees often stop by for dessert. A Neighborhood Bird and one of Ahlem’s lemon tarts may just be the perfect Baltimore meal.
LA COSETTE: 745 Fort Ave., Locust Point, 202-780-7577. HOURS: Thurs.-Fri. 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sat. 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m., Sun. 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m. PRICES: Pastries and desserts: $6.90-17.25; crepes and sandwiches: $9-15.