An acclaimed Oak Cliff bakery has been uprooted: Rush Patisserie which has been baking impeccable croissants, tarts, cakes, and pastries in the Bishop Arts neighborhood since 2009, has closed its operation at 120 Eldorado Ave., in the same building as Spiral Diner.

The closure was prompted by a freak accident in early May that decimated the shop. A woman behind the wheel of a Range Rover drove right into the building, punching a massive car-sized hole through the shop's western-facing brick wall.

Luckily, owner Samantha Rush was not in the building at the time, but it wreaked utter havoc, not only on the building but on all of her fixtures and furniture.

"I had left about 45 minutes beforehand," Rush says. "The driver took out everything: our sales area, our tables and chairs — she went through a double brick wall, so it created structural damage."

Rush is a native of New York and former accountant who graduated from the Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and founded her bakery-cafe in Deep Ellum in 2007, before relocating to Oak Cliff in 2009.

She's earned countless "best" awards for her beautiful desserts, from croissants to macarons to elaborate wedding cakes.

Although the accident put her retail operation on hold, it hasn't shut Rush Patisserie down. Her pastries are still sold at both locations of Drip Coffee, and also available via custom order, a practice that she, like many businesses, ramped up during the pandemic.

"I have always had a commissary kitchen, and we're still baking every day," she says. "People can call and place an order, and we've been making deliveries and meeting customers. It put a damper on the retail side, but we've still been selling baked goods every day."

Oddly, this was the second pastry shop to be breached by a big dumb SUV: In November 2020, an SUV crashed into kitchen of Dallas bakery Haute Sweets Patisserie. Owner Tida Pichakron and her coworkers survived although they suffered contusions, bruising, second-degree burns, and other injuries.

Joe McElroy, who owns the building where Rush was located, says that it also happened recently to another one of his properties in Oak Cliff. He was able to salvage the Rush space, although he says the mural that was painted on the wall has not been restored.