At Cannelle Patisserie, Serving a Wide Mix of Cultures Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times Gnanasampanthan Sabaratnam, one of the owners at Cannelle Patisserie, carries a tray of pastries. The bakery opened in late 2007. THE strip mall north of 31st Avenue in East Elmhurst, Queens, looks like any other. There is the parking lot, cracked and huge. There is the Pearle Vision, the Curves, the Carvel, their signs at once garish and slightly forlorn. Not much would suggest, in other words, a portal to some of New York City's most ethereal croissants, exquisite napoleons and a ruinously buttery rarity called a gâteau Breton. On a recent Saturday morning at Cannelle Patisserie, customers lined up 20 deep in front of the glass case of glistening pear tarts, golden apple turnovers and piles of those airy croissants. Behind the counter, the bakery's staff filled orders while Jean-Claude Perennou, Cannelle's pastry chef, surveyed the scene. Scraps of Spanish and South Asian languages betrayed the makeup of the neighborhood, whose modest single-family homes and imposing apartment blocks are home to large Indian, Pakistani and South American populations. "Every culture has a favorite dessert," Mr. Perennou, 46, said. The North Africans love the napoleons; the French and Asians love the Saint Honoré and Paris-Brest; the Spanish speakers love the red velvet cake and the cheesecake. Mr. Perennou himself came to New York from Brittany, France, in 1990. His business partner and fellow baker, Gnanasampanthan Sabaratnam, came from Sri Lanka in 1985. They met in 1996 in the kitchen of the Waldorf-Astoria, where Mr. Perennou was the executive pastry chef and Mr. Sabaratnam, who began his career as a dishwasher, was working as a sous-chef. The pair initially planned to open a wholesale bakery in Manhattan, but wound up in Queens after Mr. Sabaratnam found the space, which happens to be across the street from his house. Any concerns they had about the retail side were put to rest shortly after they opened their doors in 2007: Demand was such, Mr. Sabaratnam said, that "we worked 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for the first three months." Early support, Mr. Perennou said, came from the neighborhood's Breton community, the legacy of a large immigration wave during the 1950s and "60s. "They were very proud that somebody from Brittany was opening a pastry shop in Queens," he said. He returned the favor by adding gâteau Breton, a traditional butter cake, to his menu. Today, the borough's diversity is reflected not only in Cannelle's customers, but also in its staff of 16, who come from Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Guyana, Haiti, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam and the United States. "If you put 20 French people together, it's probably going to be chaos," Mr. Perennou said. Instead, his employees are "intrigued" by one another's cultures. "As long as we respect each other, it works well," he said, adding that his wife, Dalie, the manager of Cannelle, is from Haiti. The bakery is busiest on weekends. Old men nurse cups of coffee, police officers linger over pastries and families crowd around sumptuous wedges of tarte Tropézienne: rounds of puffy brioche split and filled with pastry cream. On this Saturday, Paul and Jaclyn Bannister praised the bakery as they maneuvered a stroller holding their 14-month-old son, Jonah, out the door. The couple, both preschool special education teachers, are regulars. "It fills a good hole in the neighborhood," said Mr. Bannister, 32, who is from New Zealand. Everything is exceptional. Back in the kitchen, Mr. Perennou calculated his weekly croissant output. "Fourteen-hundred," he said, laughing. I need a vacation. As it happened, he was scheduled to take one in a few weeks" time. "I'm going to Brittany, and then to Paris to look at a macaron machine," he said. He has been piping the delicate sandwich cookies by hand, a job the machine would do for him. "We sell 400 to 500 a week," he said. We can't keep up.