Maison Fanani: A French Bakery at the Foot of the Rehavia Windmill

The first thing you notice is the windmill. The second thing you notice is the smell of butter. Maison Fanani opened in spring 2026 inside the small commercial enclave that wraps around the historic Rehavia Windmill on Ramban Street, and the air in the courtyard now carries warm croissant on the morning breeze. Inside the room, a counter glows with viennoiserie under glass, an espresso machine hisses behind it, and a handful of small tables fill quickly with the neighbourhood regulars who used to wait until Friday morning to drive to Machane Yehuda for their pastry fix. They no longer need to drive. They walk three minutes down Ramban Street, push open a door, and find a complete Parisian boulangerie under the shadow of the city's most photographed stone windmill.

The heart of Maison Fanani is the front counter. Trays of all butter croissants emerge from the oven in the back through the morning, their lamination visible at the cut, the layers crisp on the outside and yielding within. Pain au chocolat sits beside them, a darker mahogany on top from a careful egg wash, the chocolate batons inside reading as molten when the pastry is still warm. Almond croissants get the classic second bake treatment, soaked, filled with frangipane, dusted in icing sugar, and crowned with sliced almonds that catch the oven light like fish scales. A kouign amann turns up later in the morning, the caramelised edges shattering between your teeth before the buttery centre gives way.