Café Dear Leon, the small Canton bakery known for its croissants, has been ranked the No. 2 bakery in the entire world on Beli's 2026 list, and it's the highest-ranked bakery in the United States to make the cut. The only operation to beat Baltimore's own pastry shop was JUNO the bakery in Copenhagen, Denmark, which took the top spot.
A Global Ranking Built on Millions of User Votes
The honor comes from Beli, a restaurant-ranking app where users rank places they've visited against one another, rather than relying on star ratings alone, according to WMAR 2 News. The company says its 2026 bakery rankings are based on a staggering 140 million ratings submitted by users around the globe, a sample size that dwarfs the more than 50 million ratings Beli cited for its 2025 roundup, as reported by NJ.com.
Behind Café Dear Leon and JUNO, the rest of the top five reads like a map of serious pastry destinations. Arsicault Bakery in San Francisco came in third, and Radio Bakery in New York rounded out the top five at No. 5, the station's report notes. Other American bakeries that cracked Beli's top 12 included Petitgrain Boulangerie in Santa Monica, Butter & Crumble in San Francisco, and Kasama in Chicago.
Momentum Has Been Building All Year
This isn't the first time Café Dear Leon has caught national attention in 2026. The Canton shop was also named a James Beard Award semifinalist earlier this year, per the same account, a recognition that already had Baltimore's food scene buzzing before Beli's list arrived.
The bakery's rise has been a few years in the making. Café Dear Leon opened in July 2020, right as the pandemic forced social distancing on a small shop where not even a handful of customers could fit inside at once, according to BmoreArt. It's co-owned by Min Kim, Cheolsoo “Charles” Lee, and Sungae “Sunny” Lee, the same trio behind the bakery's expansion.
A Second Location Already Has Its Own Following
That expansion arrived in October 2025, when La Maison by Café Dear Leon debuted in Remington on what BmoreArt described as a crisp fall day. The Remington outpost has already built its own reputation beyond Baltimore: it was featured alongside Panaderya Salvaje in Jersey City, named Beli's No. 5 new bakery in the country, in the same NJ.com roundup of bakeries that made splashes on multiple best-of lists.
For a city whose bakery scene doesn't always get the national spotlight that New York, San Francisco, or Copenhagen attract, Café Dear Leon's No. 2 finish is a notable moment. It places a Canton storefront ahead of nearly every other bakery on the planet, according to the platform's own rankings, with only one shop across an ocean managing to edge it out.
