Petit Trois Le Valley is the more spacious Sherman Oaks spinoff of a Hollywood hit from chef Ludo Lefebvre, his wife/marketing mastermind Krissy, and their accomplished chef-partners Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo. The bistro with pastel green banquettes and stylish snail logo also recruited a pastry chef with serious skills, as her croissants proved.

Pastry chef Rachel De Jong previously worked at the prestigious Inn at Little Washington in Virginia and is in charge of all patisserie, bread, and desserts at Petit Trois Le Valley. I was particularly impressed with her Chocolate Croissant ($7) which featured twin batons of molten Valrhona dark chocolate and a shattering stacks of laminated dough held together with an ungodly amount of butter. The fact that all that butter didn’t bleed onto the oven floor during the baking process is a true feat of baking physics. Ludo said Isigny butter from Normandy, France, is the key to croissant success, and it’s hard to argue with these results.