You can find some of the best scones—flaky, buttery, crunchy, savory scones, not too sweet, not too chewy—in Oak Park, in a tiny storefront just a few blocks west of Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio. There you will find Broken Tart, an unassuming Tardis-like coffee shop and bakery, almost invisible from the street.
Once you get inside, you’ll find customers queued up at the display case, eyeing hungrily the bowls of scones (kale salad and rosemary apricot), plates of sweet cornbread biscuits (jam and butter or cheese and hot honey), and cakes (olive oil, ricotta chip, pistachio zucchini loaf) and cookies. Owned and run by sisters Katie Mack and Krissy Mack, Broken Tart has only been open since September. But it’s always packed—on Saturdays the line goes out the door.
Broken Tart
Tue-Sat 8 AM-3 PM, 1108 Chicago Ave., Oak Park, 708-434-5682, brokentart.com
“We outgrew the space basically as soon as we opened,” jokes Katie. Krissy—a pastry chef with experience in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco—created the menu. “The kale salad scone and our rosemary scone and the biscuits, all were products that I worked out just specifically for Broken Tart.” The scones especially are to die for, but you have to show up early if you want one. “We make a lot of scones in the mornings,” Krissy explains, “and then I usually do a second bake once we get low. But I think some days we’re out by 10 AM. People just come in and buy huge boxes of them to take to work.”
