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Toiling in the Chocolate Trenches
By Ivy Knight
Pastry chefs work in the daytime out of necessity. The earlier they arrive and get the stovetop work finished the less they inconvenience the other stations. This was my routine on a typical morning during the three weeks I covered for the (then) pastry chef at Biff's Bistro, Tracey Freeman, while she was gallivanting around Australia with a hunky German.
Arrive at eight a.m. (I can’t come earlier because Kevin has the key and alarm code and he doesn’t arrive until eight a.m.), pull out crepe batter, and start heating crepe pans, grab ladle, parchment squares (to layer between finished crepes so they don’t stick together) and a rubber spatula. Once pans are hot, ladle batter in and swirl for a thin, even coating. Run to fridge and grab 16 litre bucket of brulee mix, made lovingly the day before, whisk vigorously to stir up all the vanilla specks, run back to crepes, tease around edges with rubber spatula, flip gracelessly, run back to brulee mix, realize brulee ramekins aren’t set up to pour mix into, swear, run back and place finished crepes on parchment, pour batter, swirl, run and pour brulee mix into ramekins, tease and flip, run back to open oven door on Chris’s station (Chris Barrett is the daytime sous-chef) and place in first tray of brulees, run back and remove crepes to parchment paper, pour batter, swirl, run back to pour water in brulee tray to create baine marie, close oven door, set timer and devote myself solely to crepes for a bit, as they are the dessert on 5 parties this week. In total I need 270 individual crepes just for the private parties; I also need crepes for the regular dessert menu.
While I’m doing all this running, Chris is setting up his station for lunch service while misquoting Withnail and I, the greatest movie ever made. As I check my brulees in his oven he’s in the middle of Uncle Monty’s “I shall never play the Dane” speech. Beside him is Kevin Hogan, the day saucier who sings “I’m Coming Up” off-key all day every day. Alex and Dya are holding down garde manger during lunch and work at other restaurants in the evening, as does our dishwasher Moothrie. He’s with us days, another place nights, writes poetry for a Sri Lankan newspaper and on his one day off a week he’s teaching his six year old daughter to be a chess champion. After I’ve removed my brulees to the walk-in fridge and finished my crepes it’s time to make frangipane (the almond filling for the crepes), peel and slice and cook the buttery apples that garnish the crepe and chop 60 oz. of chocolate for the chocolate torte, make cranberry-walnut bread for the fromage plate and on and on. Chris walks by saying, “we demand to have some cakes and fine wines, the finest wines known to humanity, we want them here and we want them now” as I begin my upper body workout with all this whisking, folding, kneading, stirring and chopping of eternal blocks of smug Callebault chocolate.
Near the end of my three weeks working in pastry my Executive Chef came by to try and persuade me to stay in the patisserie (as Tracey has announced she’s planning to move to another restaurant on her return). He began with, “So, I apprenticed for two years with a pastry chef, it was the most amazing time in my life. I learned so much, it was just incredible.”
“That sounds like hell on earth.”
“This is such an important station, maybe the most important in the whole kitchen.”
“I totally disagree.”
“There are some very important skills you can learn here.”
“That is true, but I think we should eighty-six this whole department and focus more on real food. If people want dessert they can go to Starbucks.” I don’t have a sweet tooth; chocolate gives me the worst headaches. When I go out for dinner I never finish with dessert, I’m too full. I just think sweet things are unnecessary. We don’t need them to stay healthy or to build strong bones. They are an indulgence that only serves to make people feel fat and guilty. It’s funny that I say this about desserts but not about wine and alcohol, oh well I like to drink. So many of us want to be scrawny like Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie, strutting stick-like down the street with our little fluffy puppies prancing on diamond-studded leashes, rummaging in our Balenciaga bags searching for a tic-tac (only 1 ½ calories) while pooh-poohing the idea of dessert. We’re too busy snorting coke, dropping e and guzzling Cristal to put food in our mouths.
Okay, maybe not everyone is like that.
Does a restaurant need a pastry department? Do they need a dessert menu? We have so many places like Soma, Clafouti and JS Bonbons that are turning out some of the finest confections in the country. Why not outsource your dessert menu?
Rebecca Mukare, pastry chef at the newly opened Lure (where I sous-chef), doesn’t think so. “There are so many places that make good products, but by making it yourself you have control over the freshness and the quality. It adds to your reputation, it’s a reflection of the restaurant. If you outsource a dessert then you can’t take any credit for it. If you make the dessert, or the bread, or the sorbet yourself then it shows you take pride in each and every thing that’s presented to the customer.”
I posed these same questions in an email to my friend Simone (see-moan-ay) Marvi, who’s here from Italy for a few months working at the Inn at Manitou in the pastry department. He said, “I think is important for every restaurant to have a dessert and much better to have a pastry chef. Actually I don’t like restaurant where I go to eat and they offer me a dessert that is bought from a food dealer. Why I think like that? Because if I go to eat somewhere and I don’t get a dessert I don’t stand up happy, and I walk out of the restaurant like if I’m missing something. I could probably be full ‘cause I’ve eaten too much, but there’s still a little place for some sweet, even if just a little scoop of home-made vanilla ice-cream. “Believe me, if a man goes to eat in restaurant and the starter and the main course are not so good, but the dessert is more than ok, he’ll say that he had a good meal. Instead if the starter and the main course are ok and the dessert not really ok he won’t be happy. Why? Because the dessert is the last thing a man eats, so it's the easiest to remember and the taste will stay a lot of time after and will go with him when he’ll walk out of the door.”
Andrea Kosow, assistant pastry chef at Boba agrees, “The appetizer that starts the meal reflects the restaurant just as much as the dessert that finishes it. It’s important to give the diner a well-rounded experience.” I also asked Simone why he chose to be a pastry chef. “Because I like when I can find a new dessert, when I know that it’s only my fantasy that tell me how to do it, and I put all the ingredients together and I find the right way how to serve it with the right decorations, when I know that I’m making something that the most of the people cannot do, and my guests in the restaurant like what they see and what they eat in the plates I prepared for them, even if is sad to know they don’t know how much time and patience there is behind it.”
So, I guess the pastry divas have spoken and they will continue to tantalize and intoxicate us with their chocolate and cherries, hazelnuts and 35% cream, butter and caramel and big fantastical clouds of spun sugar. Come on Lindsay Lohan, toss out your tic-tacs and hits of e, it’s time to indulge, you can always throw it up later.
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