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Opening a Restaurant. day five & six {for me}

Day One, Day Two, Day Three & Day Four.

Day Five & Six (MON & TUES):

It's all about Interviews. Person after person after person sits down, answers questions, is nervous, is bold, is strange, is late, is not dressed up enough, is overly confident, is overly formal, is bold, is humble, is eager, has never worked in a restaurant before, has graduated from one of the most culinary schools in the country and does not appear to need a job, is young, is queer, is questionable, is freckled, is flustered, is over-qualified, is all of these things.
    What they don't know is I'm a little nervous too. Excited, confused, bored, engaged, succinct, tough, quizzical. I'm learning as I go, too.

And I remember when I started. I remember who gave me my first big job. Fifteen years and I still remember that day.

A few days before I began my interviews I put out a call to some of my colleagues and friends:

"What questions do you like to ask during interviews? What questions do you wish you'd asked of the last person you hired? What's important to you in an interview? What questions have you appreciated hearing/answering?

And remember, I can't trail the person: the restaurant is not open yet."

And then, after the 3rd or so interview I got the hang of it.

This is what I learned on Monday:

    I am afraid of hiring someone who has never worked in a restaurant kitchen before at the beginning of this project. I don't want to scare someone who has no idea what to expect. Opening a restaurant is no joke. I won't have time to care for someone with no experience, not just yet at any rate. Maybe after the holidaze are over...

    I learned how to read between the lines on someones resume. I learned that few people know how to write a resume, know how to design a page for easy reading, know how to make a mark with design.

    I learned something I knew already but these days of interviewing have shown me live, in person:

    That there are few mentors left in my industry. People who take the newbies under their wing and show them the ropes. In queer communities we say that there should always be old butches who become Butch Daddy's to the young ones. The old guard French chefs still take in just turned teens as apprentices, as well most other trades still have a hierarchy so that younger craftsmen don't get hurt doing too much. I realize this is a simplification but

the things is this,

if professional cooks come out of culinary school, not one of them more than 2 years of training max., and consider themselves chefs or get turned into managers after only a few years in the field, pushing out those of us whose resumes demand a higher salary, no one will be around to teach.

In order to learn one must admit they don't know everything.

What I learned Tuesday:

If you want to open a restaurant right, hire a slick, kick-ass PR firm. If you want to learn how these people roll, sit in on a meeting with them. Do some homework and ask informed questions so that they take you seriously from the get go. {Especially if you are the only female on your management team.}

Take notes. All the time. During every meeting, every interview, and especially during the PR meeting. If you don't, you might not remember phrases like:

        marketing collateral      or      we will start positioning you for national coverage      or
                    leverage a third party endorsement     or             buzz building targets

hmmmm.

Interviews can be fun. Although if you have four in a row it can be hard to remember if you're repeating yourself. eek!
Sometimes you can know you want to hire someone even before they open their mouth.

Looking for your own equipment is exciting. Like edge-of-your-seat exciting. Like Christmas-is-tomorrow-morning-and-I-don't-want-to-miss-anything!!!!   

{MY TAYLOR ICE CREAM MACHINE ARRIVES FIRST THING TOMORROW MORNING!}

(MON) day five: 9 am - 7 pm
meals eaten: 1.5

highlights of day five:

one good interview.

1/2 a pastrami sandwich

figuring out the directions on the henna package

(TUES) day six: 7 am - 6 pm
meals eaten: 1.25

highlights of day six:

getting a ride to SF at 6:20 am with DB ---> taking a lot of really heavy stuff to the new kitchen home

being the first one in the restaurant {the pastry chef's violet hour}

  three excellent interviews*

watching new line cooks prep in the previously almost empty kitchen

poaching pretty pears

starting to make my station comfy/ organized the way I want it

a gorgeous staff meal of grilled fish, a lentil-Israeli couscous medley, summer squash and lemon-caper sauce

going to bed before 11 pm

            {*when my whole team is announced/ secured, I will say more.}

attitude on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best: 10

Sabayon. Rhubarb-Verbena-Honey & The Pastry Chef Conference

On the last days of the Pastry Chef Conference we broke off into 5 teams and each produced 4 desserts. It was a wild and wacky adventure of prepping, producing, presenting and eating!

Each team made one dessert for each of these categories:

1. Frozen
2. Fruit
3. Cake
4. Chef's choice

I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that I chose to be part of the fruit dessert.

Remember how a year ago I taught all y'all how to cook rhubarb in such a way as to preserve it's fickle rhubarb soul? How to treat it so it won't get all stringy-mushy on you? (Order you back issue by following this link.) I'm spreading the gospel. At the conference I managed to introduce many a person to the wonders of what rhubarb truly tastes and feels like!

Today I give you Rhubarb-Verbena-Honey Sabayon, a perfect foil for all the seasonal fruits coming our way in the coming months. Head over to KQED's Bay Area Bites for the details...

shuna fish lydon. in a tall tall hat.

yours truly & sherry yard. this is the FIRST time EVER that I have worn one of these hats! take note: it's made of very soft paper.

Francisco Migoya, instructor at CIA Hyde Park on the left, Stefan Riemer of Yacht & Beach Club Resorts, Disney Epcot, Florida, at the right. Both of these fine gentlemen were on my team for the final days of the conference. If you're mind is open, there is no end to what will be let into it. You never know who will touch you the most.

shuna fish lydon and dominique ansel. happy indeed.

surbhi sahni. serious & silly.

Surbhi Sahni of Devi, NYC making saffron ice cream.

Surbhi being silly. {amped up on too much sugar!}

dominique ansel & sherry yard, jackets switched.

although pastry chefs tend to be a serious group, we had a little fun at the conference. the debonair, secretly silly and strikingly handsome dominique ansel of Daniel in NYC pictured with the ebullient, gregarious, energetic sherry yard. sherry's jacket promotes breast cancer awareness, that's why it's pink.

will goldfarb, elizabeth falkner, bill yosses. a discussion on scent.

Will Goldfarb, of Room 4 Dessert, explaining how it's possible to make food smell more or less like itself with the addition of scent. Or how no food at all can tempt your senses with the perfume you desire. A punch bowl filled with the scent of oranges, or a butter dish filled with air perfumed by distilled olive oil.

Elizabeth Falkner and Bill Yosses in the background. Mandy Aftel not pictured.

alex espiritu. tarragon scent encapsulated.

This is a hand blown sugar sculpture filled with the aromatics of an herb. The post about this demonstration is here.

sherry yard. this is not a spatula.

C'est n'est pas un spatula.

Pastry Chef Conference, night 3

I am finally too tired to do a thorough re-cap.
The panel I was on was great. I said a lot of things, some of them rebellious. Yes, I know you're surprised. Bill Yosses was on the panel and my favorite quote from him was,

"I think too many of us are serving our diners our experiments. We need to test out some of our creations on our colleagues first."

Lunch was exquisite. Gorgeous on every level that the senses could experience. Sensual, supple, aromatic, spicy, visually varied in color and hue, texturally eclectic, sweet and salty. Extremely satisfying. Created by the chefs at Devi.

Then we broke off into 5 teams and came up with 4 desserts:

1. Frozen, 2. A Cake Like Item, 3. Fruit, 4. A Dessert of Your Choice.

Our team had a lot of fun throwing ideas out, being sassy, and wrapping it up in time. Then we went into the palatial estate of the CIA Greystone kitchens and got to work. Each team broke up into smaller groups and took on one of the 4 desserts. The kitchen was stiflingly hot, expansive and vast, busy like a hive on cherry blossom day. I tried to take some photos and talk to chefs on other teams, tasting this and peering at that.

Tomorrow we do a little more prep (@ 5 hours of prep, start to finish, in total) and then each team presents.

Tonight we were 15 at Ad Hoc. A loud group, rambunctious and silly, it's good they only had room for us in the crook of the dining room's elbow! We were all insanely happy to be eating beef. And it was damn good.

Bonsoir.

Pastry Chef Conference, day 2, chef 2

Emily Luchetti sponsored by Perfect Puree of Napa Valley. If you don't know this woman, let me tell you. She's tough. No nonsense. Well spoken. Strong. Clear voiced. And she is someone who was baking when I started, 15 years ago. To still be a pastry chef, working in a restaurant kitchen, writing books, designing menus, training staff, and going to conferences, appears to be a rarity these days. She was my inspiration in the beginning, and she still is today.

Next: Of Pies, Crisps, Pudding Cakes, and More: Re-Imagining American Comfort Desserts, circa 2007. Emily Luchetti, Gale Gand and Leslie Mackie.

What does comfort mean to you and how have you changed comfort?

We have a glossary. Some included: Pandowdy, Crumble, Cobbler, Brown Betty, Buckle, Grunt.

"Cobblers were meant to look like a cobblestone street. The Slump/Grunt is unattractive, a pale dessert. Maybe you'll want to update this. It has to be steamed." GG

"I've always used shortening in our pie doughs. But now we're using a palm fruit fat. It bakes a little differently, but it's not hydrogenated. People tend to like the individual tarts/little pies.They like this." LM

"We serve an individual lemon meringue pie and people seem to love to have their own." GG

Leslie Mackie is showing a steamed pudding. [Remember when I wrote about those?]

Gale and Emily are talking about their grandmothers.

"The only thing my grandmother made was martinis." We laugh heartily.

"These have a great texture. A very sensual texture in fact." LM

Gale is thanking the Batterberry's and CIA. "I say to people I'm going to a pastry retreat. People ask me what that is and I say, 'You know, that's when we go and hob nob with our fellow pastry wizards.' " GG

"Look up this book. the Emperors of Chocolate." EL

We are all giddily eating. Everyone is terrifically happy. Like children, all of us. I can taste the craft, the love, the experience, the knowledge. The nod.

"The animal crackers box has a string on it because they were originally designed to be Christmas ornaments. A little known fact, Oreos are made with Black Cocoa. It's getting a bit of a revival. Does anyone use it?" GG

"Super alkalized is how its produced. Or stripped of its chocolate flavor," Micky of Guittard tells us.

There is a tiny tart that is an ode to the Snickers bar. I have to curse here, please excuse me. It is ridiculously fucking delicious. Can you say goddamn?

Now there's a little bit of n argument/discussion about how the chocolate chip cookie was created.

The chocolate steamed pudding is lovely. Delicious, texturally intriguing, soft but not like a baked custard. Think layer cake meets warm brownies meets warm chocolate cake. Strong chocolate perfume. Like when someone walks in the room and you know it before seeing them.

We're talking about the trans fats in Girl Scout cookies. Yes, it's still in there, although they say it's not. Something about how it's slightly below the legal limit so they can get away with it.

P.S. the translation for biscotti, by the way, is cookies. IT DOES NOT MEAN TWICE BAKED. They are baked twice or three times for extended shelf life.

And I'm giving props to Mallomars and Goo Goo bars. On the mike, yo.

This has been an exciting session!

Pastry Chef Conference, day 2

Pastry 2010: Adapting Latin Flavors, From Brazil and Peru to Cuba. David Guas. A Handsome, thick fellow with a spontaneous humour, perfect for a demo at CIA where the technical aspects aren't always seamless. But there is a camera hiding in the ceiling and screens dot the ceiling, so there are a lot of ways to look at the demo.

David has been a friendly, out going, engaging person for me at the conference. We sat next to each other at Redd the first night. He is the executive pastry chef at 4 restaurants in Washington DC. Deep voiced and soul-patched, he's a down to earth fellow from New Orleans.

He's making an egg yolk rich dough, putting it through a pasta machine to get it really thin. So thin you can see your fingers through it. Pinched to hold the same caramel found Alfajores.

Now there's a yucca "doughnut" made with queso fresca. Nicaraguan.

He's talking too fast to know how to spell the names of the desserts. But they're delicious, strong on the canela (cinnamon, but not the powdered cinnamon flavor.) side, sweet, heavy with caramel, texturally intriguing.

________________

Next: Our Dessert Heritage as Inspiration, Part II: Tasting History with Stephen Schmidt. This would be a difficult presentation to encapsulate. I'll tell you a little about the room.

Surbhi Sahni sits to my right. Bright eyed, and pretty like a girl, Surbhi is earnest and humble. She's recording, on video-cam, much of the conference. Scott Peacock on my left. Scott and I are brethren. He's brought his own Mariages Freres tea. During the day he asks a few times for a tea pot filled to the rim with the hottest water any one can find. On the side he requests heavy cream. Then we carry these things around.

David Guas sits to Surbhi's right. He sits in a short sleeved, seersucker chefs coat. Hmmmm. We discussed this piece of clothing last evening. Many chefs fetishize their whites. We wear only a few pieces in our uniform, so we get picky about them. Working in the subtropics of swampy Washington DC, breathability is an issue.

Some people have sat next to the same people, in the same chairs, in every presentation. I've tried to move around, changing my perspective, my sitting partners. No time to be shy here. We are an intimate group, with previous alliances apparent. But, wonderfully, there is an openness. And few, if any, are conceited to the point of unfriendliness. We are here because we are open to sharing.

Last night, at dinner, there was a discussion begun about one of the presentations. We are a tough crowd, in a way, and some of the chefs felt that a presentation was disrespectful to pastry making as a highly technical art form. There are a number of European trained pastry chefs here. They work in America, but allegiances sway towards their highly technical training.

I don't have an answer for where we got to on that discussion, but I was happy these thoughts came to the surface aloud. In America we have a hard time with sticking to tradition. Perhaps because we are a new country. Perhaps because we were rebellious young. [I am currently watching the History Of New York, a PBS series.]

More on this another time. Your thoughts?

_____________

Points of interest in this presentation:

Blanc Mange as it was in the 10th century. "All dessert are Arabian in their origins." An early American "wine sauce" made with molasses, rose water nutmeg, butter, and flour. Indian Pudding. Calves' Foot Jelly.

___________________

I'm on a panel today, so I'll need to take a break from live blogging.

Thanks for reading!

Pastry Chef Conference, night 2

I have a crush on the conference. On all the people. Well, almost all of them.

For some, it's about their snarkiness. For another, it's about his purist values. For her it's based in her silliness, her wit and charm and stories. For another it's about his long, soft drawl. For some it's about their open mind, their passion for the craft, their unwavering focus.

We are a strange bunch. We have come out of our respective kitchens, our long days and nights, to rub our eyes with the backs of our fists and screw our faces into wrinkly little question marks, cocking our heads to the side and saying, "huh? where am I? this is not my beautiful station. this is not my regular day. how did I get here?"

And then we relax. We feed each other foods from our minds, from our hearts, from our pasts, and from the future. We are time travelers in all directions possible.

Pastry chefs.

We are alchemists and sorcerers, yeses and possibles, fantasy and fiction, reality and compromise, commercialized and cutting edge, safe and naughty, massive production and fine dining, tall and short, sweet and salty, artisans and scientists, competitive and naive, foreign and familiar, vanilla and power play, bitter and sweet, curious and infamous, voracious and complacent, important and sturdy, crunchy and smooth, frozen and molten, fancy and rustic, brazen and cautious, traditionalists and guerrillas, seasonal and not, grayed and dyed, hoarse and quiet, restaurant and bakery, known and obscure.

We are all these things, not these lists, binary and encompassing.

It's lovely to see us in our whites, and not. To see a person on new soil, in the warm air of an early summer devoid of rain in Napa.

There is a walk to dinner and I am telling my companions about the black walnut root stock on which English walnuts are grafted. There are the conversations about sugars and how to better understand the range of ingredients we still, although work with every day, know little about.

We flirt and tease. Laugh and listen. Inspire. Ask questions.

I love the questions. Especially the ones we will not strive to answer. The ones which lead me to more and more questions. It means we are a thinking gang. We tie our thoughts up and take them on the open road. We beg questions and eat questions and sleep on feather-beds filled with thousands of tiny curly question marks.

We let questions roll off our tongues, or we pull them back onto the farthest reaches of our tongues, savoring,          savoring questions.

For, in the end, no matter the desserts we create, our questions remain unanswered. Forever we will ask them. Forever will our craft lay before us like a never-ending horizon line; seemingly definitive, but elusive and out of reach. No matter. We will continue to walk and prance and skip and hop in parabolas and sprint and meander and slide and gallop and glide towards that horizon.

Being here means that we will meet along the way. Those who came before, those who will come after. We hear stories of people passed and those about to pass.

We connect, we share, we dish, we watch, we laugh with recognition. And then we sleep. And dream.

Pastry Chef Conference, early evening 1

The CIA at Greystone, St. Helena campus, has wireless. But for some reason, once I type something, there is no guarantee that it will stick. Therefore I am going to have to come back to Elizabeth Falkner and Will Goldfarb's incredible co-presentation. As well, we are missing the handsome and seductive Scott Peacock's demonstration on biscuits.

Now we are here: Aromatics, Seduction, and American Pastry: Frontiers of Flavor. Mandy Aftel, Stephen Durfee, and Alex Espiritu.

Messianic? Mandy Aftel is fanatic about scent. Words, phrases-- top note, middle note, concrete, essential. We are smelling different scents as they exist, as they are distilled in various ways.

She says some are animal, some are dirty, some are sexy. Scent as personality. As a way of organizing hundreds of bottles of scents.

Why would we use these? Why not go out and get the flavor itself.

Sometimes scents, or the oils themselves, will pick up flavors that the actual ingredients won't be able to convey themselves.

This, of course, begs some questions. What is the soul of taste? Is there true flavor? Can 2 people taste the same taste or is up to each mouth? Just how interlinked is smell with taste?

______________

Alex Espiritu. Tall, serious, smart, quiet. Perfect for Ron Siegel's pastry chef role.

Neroli is the flower bud from a bitter orange.

He's showing off the Thermomix. "Check this out, it's really wild." [he's using a soy based "egg replacer" and xantham gum to make "meringue" with juice and the stuff, for a "sorbet."

MA: "The thing about Neroli is that it will change whatever is next to it."

The dessert is: strawberry sorbet, foamy Gewurztraminer "meringue", strawberry slivers, sprayed with neroli.

Delicious. Elusive, sweet, light, seductive, sensual. Lovely indeed.

Now he's showing a dessert with a blown sugar bubble that has a spray of scent inside.

"That's the danger of having things like this be a trend. Not everyone can pull it off." -- the gentleman on my left, who wants to remain anonymous. We're talking about whether we would use scents in these ways.

Blown sugar? Beautiful and very impressive. But I don't mean to disappoint you-- you'll never see blown sugar on Shuna desserts.

Stephen, ever practical and silly, hands out "smores" on fire smoked grape branches. Marshmallow filled with ganache.

Pastry Chef Conference, afternoon 1, chef 2

"Gelato. It is a way of life.

"You make it every day. And if you don't sell today, you melt and re-churn."

Of Italian Traditions and Frozen Desserts: Serving Up The Next Generation of Flavors and Ideas. Biagio Settepani.

"Make sure to always sanitize your machine, especially if your base has eggs. And never make enough base for more than a few days. Gelato is supposed to be fresh. Australia is second, Italy is third, France is second."

At this point someone in the audience says,

"It's kind of like soccer." Everyone laughs.

Q- "Do you have a shock freezer?"

"Yes. And it was worth all the money we spent on it."

Q- "Is there legislation in Italy about the jurisdictions around what can be called gelati? I know in this country we can call anything whatever we want."

Q- "Yes, of course.

Lots of questions about pasteurization.

Pastry Chef Conference, afternoon 1

Macaron. Not pronounced Macaroon. The history, the tradition.

European Traditions: Assessing Impacts on American Pastry.
We are first listening to Pascal Janvier.

"They are not very difficult to make, you just have to be very respectful. it's not about cups and spoons as if you are making pastry. There is nothing more, for me, exact than grams. The macaron should be flat, round, somewhat shiny.

I always use egg whites from the day before. never from cracking an egg that day. they have to sit, at least one day. And I always mix th sugar with the whites first, so there is no cramping in the bowl. The meringue has to be quite stiff."

And now he starts the mixer at medium high speed.

"If I have to add any colors, I would do it now. Once I add the additions, the sugar and the almonds, they become lighter. But I never make them very dark in color.

The meringue is stiff enough, the whisk stays in the batch. You could make man batches in a day, and they are different every time. One batch is not the same as the next. It's just physics, eh?

Mix everything, you don't have to be gentle. You have to break it down a little, until you get a nice ribbon. [with a spatula, by hand.] When we first opened the store in Los Gatos, people didn't know what they are. But maybe now people have traveled more and they know what it is.

Try to pipe them very much the same size. Bake at 165 C or 330F (does anyone know?) 11 minutes, if you ave a hamper, open it up."

Q- "Why a silpat over a perforated pan? and do you dry them a little before in the oven?"

"I get more heat from the bottom, more even. And some dry and some do not, it's up to you."

Q- "Why do you need old egg whites? and I heard the mixer should be medium speed, not high. Another French pastry chef said to do this."

"Well I don't want to start a French pastry chef war."

"I used to work in the place where every day we moved the egg whites over one spot on the shelf. And we were not allowed to use the egg whites until they were at the right spot on the shelf. We were forbidden.

When I was a young apprentice I used to have to hold my nose when using egg whites, this is how old they were. But now if you do that, no? You will be jailed."

Q- "Do they freeze well?"

"Yes, definitely. Very well."

Q-"Do you ever use any other nut flours?"

"No. This is a very traditional recipe. I know that in this country you do what you want. And now in France you see everything, but this is the traditional way."

Pastry Chef Conference, day 1

Dan Barber, our savoury chef interloper gave an incredible talk. Strangely apropos considering breakfast featured raspberries and blueberries...

Taking one dessert, he spoke on how each ingredient was grown, harvested, produced, component by component. Polenta, strawberries, eggs, cream. With a slide presentation from Stone Barns, we saw farming practices the place utilizes. Barber talked about using technology to the benefit of small farming, a seemingly oxymoronic vision, but intriguing to see nonetheless. (Think movable milking parlours, Egg Mobiles, intensive rotational grazing, the Sandberger machine for compost.)

______________

Next we had a talk and demo from Suvir Saran and Surbhi Sahni of Devi in NYC. Interesting points of interest: Hindus do not eat eggs so a lot of desserts are egg free and leavened with a baking soda and yogurt. Saran said something I appreciated, "Just adding spice doesn't cut it, " speaking to merely using the spice from a region, a country and calling it of that place, "you have to know the history, you have to know how to use them." Sahni talked about learning how to use spices, the learning curve of understanding their strength, their abilities to mix or not based on different oils in different spices.

Saran also talked about how Indians really "overwork" their doughs. I put this in quotes, because some doughs require this for exacerbating gluten. (Like strudel.) Sahni said that when dough is overworked and then rolled really thin, it fries up really crispy.

_______________

Now we're listening to Nancie McDermott in a presentation, Layered and Full of Life: Desserts of the American South. Good thing she's a real Southerner. Fast talker, animated, funny, and respectful of the past and regional differences.

Next is Phila Hach, a white haired woman from Tennessee. First she talked about raisin pie and now she's talking about recipes from her 14th cookbook. (I'm trying to take photos but it's veritably impossible to take good ones.) "I woke up at 4 am, 6 am my time, because I couldn't wait for daylight; I just wanted to walk in and see what these young people were up to."

She's colorful, expressive, silly, spontaneous. Think Julia Child meets Edna Lewis.

(I've just written a lot of quotes but my connection here is a little strange and I've just lost a lot. Eek!

"The older you get, the crazier you get."

She's making pie by hand. Literally. With her hands, mixing eggs and butter and other additions. Dominique Ansel is sitting to my left and we love her. ("Imagine her at Daniel," I whisper to him.)

Now there's a story about making pies for 350 people. On the fly. At Alex Haley's house.

"Have faith in everything you do. Have heart, have faith, have soul. Sometimes it turns out better that you think."

Gale Gand asks Phila, "Are you married? And if not, will you marry me?"

I ask, "Can you talk a little more about the hot water crusts as they compare to what we more know, which is of course cold or freezing water crusts?"

But she is not able to expound on the science as I am asking. Tis fine, she is a wonderful baker in whose hands reside decades of baking memory.

Pastry Chef Conference, night 1

Sometimes when I am driving up to Napa it can be a bit surreal. Like I'm traveling through layers of memories. A place that was once home. Roots were driven deep here, years ago. I look at that place and "...remember the time--", I glance to my right and, although tract houses crowd the landscape, I remember the field it once was.

Rows of corduroy fill in with new grape growth, bright, almost translucent lime juice green, traversing this way and that, sometimes flush against the horizon. Certain trees are marked with wreaths. Year after year someone remembers to mark the spot where their friends were killed. The roads take many lives in Napa Valley.

When darkness comes, it envelops, drops down like a silk velvet curtain, heavy but soft. Quiet is the night, of people, of cars, of sound. It's late, but I'm propped awake by new people's voices in my head, ideas springing up like sprouts, a rich dinner in my stomach.

Check in was at 5. I was early, looked around the CIA bookstore, schmoozed with a wine glass full of water in my hand. At first the crowd was quite daunting. I stood alone for some time before saying hello to someone. But as we chatted, it was like we were old friends. We have something in common. Even if there are many things we don't share, or don't know about each other.

This conference is the only one I know of that is for pastry chefs only. There is a camaraderie here that is silly and serious, professional and friendly, shy and bold, competitive and trusting. We all know who the other is, or who we work with and for. We've read each other's news in trade press, local and national papers, glossy magazines and from the shelves of bookstores.

But we rarely get out of the kitchen long enough to socialize, meet new pastry chefs, eat each other's work, hear another's ideas.

Tonight at dinner we were a varied group from many angles. SF, NYC, Washington DC, and LA. We were a few women and more men. We were American and French, all white. We sussed each other out, bonded, laughed, teased, told stories, remembered, listed resume names, compared staff numbers, and ate a good deal of food with salt in it. Many of us happily ate foie gras and every dessert was consumed with pleasure, wonder and mild critique.

It's an honor to be here.

How did the conference start? With a slide presentation about the origins of pie followed by an overview of fried doughs, with a tasting of three variations on one doughnut concept.

In six hours, the first day will begin with a talk given by Dan Barber. He is a savory interloper, but we've only given him a little shit for it.

More soon...

Pastry Chef Conference!

In just a few days I'm off to Napa for a 4 day pastry chef conference! From morning to night, pastry chefs. Hour after hour of pastry chef talk. Eat pastries. Talk pastry. Think sweet things. Dream among the grapes.

April 25-28.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

The Culinary Institute of America
Greystone, St. Helena

Meet my heroines. Heros. Say hello to old bosses. Ask questions of the greats. See old friends. Talk shop. Smile knowingly. Take note, take notes. Live blog it. Photograph. Inspire & get inspired.

The event is not open to the public. A few years ago there was one focusing on healthful desserts. For some idea of what I'm about to enter, here's the link.

A few names from the 52 invite-only pastry chefs in attendance:

Dan Barber, Lincoln Carson, Marisa Churchill, Claire Clark, Elizabeth Falkner, Gale Gand, Dorie Greenspan, Stanton Ho, Pascal Janvier, Emily Luchetti, Leslie Mackie, Nicole Plue, Amy Scherber, Sherry Yard and Bill Yosses.