Best of KC 2020: Blackhole Bakery on Troost overcame the odds

This month, we published The Pitch’s annual Best of Kansas City issue. You can browse the results of the readers’ poll here. The issue also included a list, compiled and written by our editorial staff, of some of our current favorite things about Kansas City in 2020. We’ll be publishing these items online throughout November. 

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Six months ago, if you had asked us, “Should I open a bakery in the middle of a pandemic?” our answer would have been a bloodcurdling scream. Fortunately, Jason Provo didn’t ask. The pastry chef opened Blackhole Bakery near 55th and on Troost in April, just a few weeks after shutdown orders and capacity restrictions fell over the city’s dining scene like a lead curtain. Since then, Provo and fellow pastry chef Alyssa Bailey have been turning out neatly glossed cinnamon rolls and adorable rice-flour mochi donuts to a line of customers that extends out onto the sidewalk on weekends. 

While those cinnamon rolls and donuts are fan favorites, we keep coming back for Blackhole’s French pastries, which are all crisp edges and shatteringly light layers. Recent highlight: a coconut-mossed pastry with a dab of crème pâtisserie to adhere a beautifully charred ring of fresh pineapple. As a general rule here: the weirder the flavor combo sounds, the better it probably is. 

Someday, we’ll be able to relax on a floral-print couch in the cozy bakery and soak up its mid-century hair salon vibes. Until then, we’re content to power through one of Blackhole’s cinnamon palmiers in the car, snowing flakes of buttery pastry onto our laps with each bite.

Blackhole Bakery 5531 Troost Ave, Kansas City, Mo