I’m sick and tired of wondering up and down the mall, thinking to myself, “wow, it is such a wonderful morning outside and I would really like an espresso and a pastry.” I’m reasonably happy with the espresso situation, but the available pastries don’t compliment a morning coffee. We’ve got donuts, cookies, crazy cakes and a lot more, but I ask you, my dear Charlottesvillains, where is the Pâtisserie?
Is the skillset too difficult to learn? Does Charlottesville’s relatively small size not justify a quality pastry chef? I’ve wondered this for 5 years now and I can’t seem to come up with an answer. Perhaps it’s not attractive for a well-trained patissier to come to a little town like Charlottesville. But, with desserts that cost $7 to $10 at most of the higher end restaurants in town, you think this would be an attractive business opportunity.
So, here is my proposal for the brave epicurean/entrepreneur who wishes to recruit an ambitious pastry chef to Charlottesville:
1. Recruit a Budding Star from One of the Best Schools. Tell her that Charlottesville seriously lacks skills in the pastry department and that she can make her name here, much like Chocolatier Tim Gearhart. Bring her samples from all the bakeries in town to show her how much her product will kick ass.
2. Invite Her to Charlottesville. Bring her to the best restaurants in town. Let her taste the dessert in the area. Show her how popular Charlottesville eating is.
3. Find Cool Retail Space. Milano’s is available; there has got to be something neat in Belmont.
4. Name it Something Cool. Ask our site what you would name a pastry shop. Offer a reward.
5. Look at supplying weddings, events and restaurants. Restaurants and caterers can’t do desserts as well as someone who is trained in the arts of the sweet. I’m sure there are opportunities to supply a lot of the local scene with high quality desserts that are way better than the $9 crap they serve you.
6. Be successful (I hope).
.
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Tagged as: bakery, Charlottesville, Dessert, pastry, Questions, sweet
You know, as much of a dessert fiend as I am, I haven’t really missed this. Albemarle Baking Co. makes fancy enough stuff to satisfy my cravings, and more often then not I’d rather have a really good brownie than a perfectly executed opera cake.
Also, Fuel used to have some of this when they first opened, as Ms. Kluge imported her own pastry chef straight from France. I don’t know if he’s still at the farm shop, or if he quit like everyone else from her original roster.
Lys, complacency is not a way of life!
I’m with Thor. ABC is not Patisserie-ish enough. Where are the mille-feuilles? The petits fours? The pavés?
P.S. The best pastry chef I know doesn’t make pastry anymore. He cleans up empty beer glasses at South Street. WTF?
ABC makes good bread, but their pastries are very chewy (not in a good way).
Their pains au chocolats aren’t that great either. Makes me wanna cry.
No, ABC is a liquor store.
/it hurt to type that
RE Caterers: Very few caterers make their own desserts. They usually buy from famous bakeris/patisseries in town that already have a retail presence. The skill and workshop required for baking is completely different than that of a catering kitchen. If their desserts suck its most likely due to a shitty local bakery *cough* ABC *cough*
@5: agreed! ABC pain au anything pretty much suck. Its like they made it through the first semester of baking school and then skipped and chased sexual exploits for the second one.
Where does this leave us? No where. We are stuck with re-iterations of the local gelato scene or another “brilliant” molten bullshit lava cake. Enough with the frikkin lava cake! 1-its like 10 years old, 2-every restaurant and their mother offers it and thinks its the best thing since sliced bread, and 3-you can buy it in the frozen section of any respectable grocery store.
I guess this is the desperate cry across the interwebs to call upon a superstar pastry chef who is both disgruntled and well-financed and wants to have us fall in love, again, with sugar. Take me.
Aparently, there’s a great pastry chef in Farmville that makes Dr. Suess looking cakes. My mom got one for her birthday, it was awesome. Expensive, but awesome.
what do you want shen I’ll make it for ya!
i agree we need some good éclairs and pain au raisin up in this place.
i know a great pastry chef but right now he is just cooking at the old l’aventura joint, if somebody got some cash to spare he would be a good guy to talk to plus he is French so you can’t go wrong with that.
@7 you can buy frozen pains aux chocolates at TJ’s. apparently they’re quite good (says my brother who insisted on 3 or 4 for breakfast every morning in france, italy, amsterdam, & prague). point being, don’t discount a baked good just because you can buy it frozen.
@9: Oh shit, you read CVillain. Can I have a raspberry napoleon?
@11: BAH! Sacrilege! FROZEN pain au chocolat? Never!
@11 im not knocking frozen pastries, especially at TJs cause they are awesome…but if you go to a restaurant you should be somewhat impressed. Getting the same thing at a restaurant that comes out of the frozen foods section doesn’t really awe me. Taste is great, uniqueness is zero. To that effect, if you have a party at home, Trader Joe’s frozen French pastries/cakes are an amazing bargain.
@13 its ok, breathe….we can just make pain au chocolat smoothies.
Mmm?
@14 oh, i agree. i was really disappointed by a few of the receptions i went to last year, at the ivy inn & C&O in particular, because it seemed like they all had the same sam’s club frozen hors d’oeuvres, like those mini-quiches.
@2 - you’re right. i’ve been on one of those basic food made well kicks lately, which has left me prefering a good homemade burger over a 4 star entree these days. I think it’s the abundance of great ingredients this time of year and the fact that I can’t actually drink any wine so what fun’s a high end meal. so when you mention dessert, my mind goes straight to milkshake at this point.
/plebe at heart
Ummm, don’t think restaurants of that caliber would use frozen hors d’œuvres.
@18 - depends how little the customer was willing to pay for the event.
@18,19 i’d been so excited for the one at C&O, having heard it was a good restaurant, but then they served the same exact crappy mini quiches etc as ivy inn. it wasn’t in the restaurant but in the gallery, so maybe they felt they didn’t have to live up to the same standards? i was coming from a reception at zocalo, which always has an open wine list & i think bar too & the mini-cheese balls & often mini-chocolate balls, among other things, & is always fabulous, & at C&O there was A red & A white, & liquor was available but they had to go to the real bar to pour it, so i didn’t believe i actually got a grey goose martini. i’ve been to receptions at oxo with great food but A red & A white too, which the bartender told me they didn’t even serve there normally they were so crappy. so lys seems to have a point.
@20: Ohhh, if it was in the gallery at C&O, it was probably food provided by whatever artist you went to see, not something the resto made.
ah. not artist, law firm. but probably same thing, huh/
Thor, I personally offended by this post. For starters, it’s sexist. That’s right, I said it. Not all pastry chefs are female. In fact most competitors in the World Pastry Cup are men. Three person teams, mostly men. Probably 80-90% of the competitors are men.
Second, most restaurants in town are too small to have a pastry chef. Nine times out of ten, the same PERSON (not sexist) who made your salad, plated your dessert. I would be surprised if any restaurant had the place for a pastry chef, let alone did enough business to staff one.
Third, I believe a high-end pastry shop in Charlottesville would not make it a year. People would complain about the high prices, and stop going. Too many people continue to go to old restaurants that have been around for-ever, that rarely (if ever) change their menus. What would be the motivation for a trained pastry chef to up-root and move here, to start a business and then end up cleaning “up empty beer glasses at South Street.” (@3)?
Or maybe I’m just pessimistic.
@23 that’s funny, cause i thought his use of the female was that hyper-antisexism that makes people use “she” instead of “he” as an example.
I chose she instead of he/she which sounds weird.
I see…
@23: Oh really? Because C-ville doesn’t already support places like gelato shops? And don’t imply that the dude who works at SS now does so because he had a business fail.
I don’t know much about the pastry business, but it seems as though making dessert for local high end restaurants would be a stable income supply, no?
Yeah, I mean think of all the places that currently buy their bread from ABC. Also, Hamilton’s and Ten buy chocolates from Gearharts for their desserts. A high-end CHOCOLATE SHOP. But I guess C-ville can’t support frivolous things like a pstry shop. Oh no.
@27: I was just using what you said as a point. Maybe he is more happy doing he is doing. I don’t care, that’s his business. If you didn’t want to talk about it, maybe you shouldn’t have brough it up. Do you always feel like you need to start a fight with someone? I’ve noticed you do that a lot.
Who’s fighting B-Wilk? I see people discussing, but no fighting. Perhaps you are trying to start something? You jumped on here yelling, “Sexist pig!” at Thor.
I’m a Pexist Sig.
Did i just get quoted for something I didnt say?
As for fighting, go check you banter on the Goodbye OXO.
Ooh you’re getting all meta on me. I think you’re just trying to distract us from the fact that we picked apart your arguments.
Who’s got the Jello? I’m bringing the tub and the chicks in bikinis.
/you both are over-analyzing each other!
@35: Chicks in bikinis? She was right. You are SEXIST!
Sexist pig
@34: I don’t believe so.
My point was, I don’t think it would last. Some places make their own desserts. The ones that don’t probably get them from Sysco. I don’t think that many restaurants would buy more expensive desserts from a retail shop, when it would be cheaper to get them from Sysco. If they are cutting cost buy using pre-made desserts instead of making them in house, where is the benefit is using a local shop?
I’m glad Gearharts is stays open. Do you think if more people shopped there they would have to cater to Ten? I know l’etoile makes their own chocolates in house? How hard could it be?
At some point you cross into the cost of product vs the cost of labor to produce it.
To have a high-end bakery, you need a lot of space. To get that space in Charlottesville, where there is enough foot traffic, would cost you a fortune. In turn, the retail prices would have to be high.
Yes, you could cater to restaurants, but whats more impressive, having a dessert on your menu veryone in town knows came from the pastry shop, or having in house made desserts… or at least having desserts you could pass of as house made?
What kind of jello match is complete without bikini chicks carrying around big signs before each round?
What about The Baker’s Palette, or From Scratch or Angel Cakes and that new cupcake place. I imagine that they could or would make anything that they were asked to make so long as there was a profit to be made. The issue in my opinion does not lie with the lack of establishment but the reluctance to pay for the “high end” merchandise. I was once told that dessert on the menu had the highest profit margin next to salad. Maybe, local places just don’t want to put forth the effort or would rather try to figure it out in house. Stop accepting lackluster desserts and they will stop serving them.
@38: Then how come some places such as The Local buy Mona Lisa pasta and sell it in their dish? You know it would be cheaper to make it themselves but they’re almost kinda proud they’re using this yummy local pasta.
/totally not fighting right now but discussing. thx.
I’m a pastry chef AND I have a dessert business! I live in Charlottesville, work out of my kitchen in Waynesboro, and I plan on supplying the Charlottesville area with as much dessert (and french pastries in particular) as possible. I lived in France and learned about the art of pastry there. I know not only what the real thing looks like, but how important it is to use the finest ingredients possible. From organic sugar, organic chocolate, and organic bourbon vanilla beans to locally grown fruit, pastured eggs, local cream and milk AND local flour, I can make a mean pastry. I’m looking for clients. I both cater and have a retail shop on the East side of town for pick-up. Did I mention my specialty is custom-designed ice cream and sorbet? I also do ice cream cakes! Get in touch! http://www.perfectflavor.com, lynsie@perfectflavor.com
@38 have you ever worked in a commercial food operation? There are many bakeries that make desserts for restaurants, usually they make custom one-offs designed by the restaurant that you couldn’t find in the retail channel. Restaurants don’t need to advertise this outsourcing either. I don’t think Gearhart’s feels they HAVE to sell to Ten. Ten gives their chocolates to diners as part of the meal and it is a fantastic touch. The fact that Gearhart’s makes them for Ten doesn’t do anything to the exclusivity of the chocolate. If they had more business they would probably continue selling to Ten anyways…it is great branding for them and gives Ten something they couldn’t do on their own.
For the record making chocolate well is not an easy task…patisseries are different from chocolatiers. I am sure nanigans has seen this in France. The classic lines of cooking are divided into many “hats”: sauce chefs, chocolate chefs, pastry chefs, bakers (breads only), etc…
Given the clientele in cville, I think if restaurants stepped up their dessert game they could charge commensurately. The argument about why use a local shop if it is more expensive is moot, especially given the new trend around supporting the local food economy, ie: Farmers Market, Mona Lisa Pasta, Gearhart’s, etc…
I don’t want to fight. I’m a lover, not a fighter.
Although making pasta is cheaper, it is every labor intensive. Unless you have the set up for mixing, rolling, and drying the pasta, it doesnt make since to make.
So Mono Lisa’s labor cost for pasta is low. They have the space, the set up, and the staff to make it. When you move into specialized products, its a whole other ball game.
Anyway, I’m running late for work.
@41: Fuck the restaurants. We just need someone to make patisseries for ME. And yes, I have been to some chocolatiers. You can tell by the pretentious italics I keep using.
@42 oh snap, nanigans has a new bff in town! Could we arrange a “coming out” party with all the cVillains?
@44 and bwilk walks…wah wah wahhhhhhhhhhhhh. Quick someone else get on nanigans!
@40 I think nana (wtf can I call you without typing Shenanigans 24-7??) would agree that a place that makes cookies, no matter how good, would have trouble making seriously breath-taking desserts. Cookies and high-end pastries are verrrrrrrrrrrrrry different.
@42: I like to keep things interesting on here and I do have an eTemper but I wasn’t fighting with you. I appreciate you contributing to the post actually. Have a good night at work.
@42: Oh shit! Where’d you come from? I love you btw…
@47 was @44. Whoops.
And coco, you’re one to tlak. Least I never got kicked off the site. Nah nah na nah nahhhh…
Maybe you should write more content and we will have grounds to kick you off too hehehehe. Up till now I don’t think commenters have been scared off.
Sorry my dear shen but I think I may agree to some extend with B-WILK. Unlike gearharts or mona lisa (you can freeze pasta), you have a freshness issue with high end pastries that is critical, both for the vendor and the restaurant, especially when you can hang onto creme brulee for a couple of days, no problem. I think it might take a bigger population then we have here to support it - even at my best, I could only eat at a place like that maybe once every two weeks (lest I become a fat ass), and it sounds like we are all hoping for a place high enough on the fancy scale that you’d lose the kid business that fuels splendora’s or chaps. Add to that the price point you’d need to charge (at least $5-10 per item retail) in a town where people consistently believe paying more than $5 for a sandwich is an outrage and I get nervous. If they really worked the wedding cake angle, they could make it (or if they could take away some of ABC’s wholesale business, or if they baked off premise in a low rent location and only had a small retail storefront somewhere with more traffic), but I can’t imagine surviving on delicate pastries alone - it’s just so much time/labor!
@5`: Don’t go using your logicky-logic on me. I want pastries dammit.
Oh and Gearhart’s doesn’t keep very long and is pretty pricey.
@50: Yeah, I used to post but it started taking a really long time for my posts to show up on the site. Lammmmmeeee!
@52 - this is why I adore you
@55: I lub you too.Let’s hug. In bikinis. For that sexist pig Thor.
@54 long time, smime.
@56 Yeah, I’m looking a bit whale like in a bikini these days, but if he’s into that kinda thing…
Oh I mention bikinis and look who shows up. Stop gawking and argue against Lys’ point @51.
@46 You are probably right regarding breathtaking desserts, but most of the folks that run those places (the bakers palette and angel cakes) are CIA graduates. They are selling what sells, they accept custom orders and until you tried you may not know exactly how breathtaking they can be. Just my thoughts.
@46: Dude, stop adding to your comment, it’s freaking me out. And everyone calls me Shen.
@60: Not dissing on those places but a French style patisserie is it’s own special kind of place, not just a bakery. And the breathtaking stuff is around all the time, not just for special order.
Shens- we are checking the drafts and pending review posts VERY frequently now….so your stuff will most likely be post-ed. Care to join the fun!?
Oh well…if that’s the case I am all over it like white on rice. LIke ugly on an ape. I don’t like to actually work at work anyways.
@63: You were all over me? How do I not remember that?
Roofies are going around town, dude.
@23 I didn’t up roots and move here to “pick up empties” I do much more, including the brewing with Jacque. I was a pastry chef for the last 15 years all around the country more recently pastry chef at Keswick and left with John and Alice to open up OXO, I was there for seven years (I left 3 years ago) and have to say that I made some of the best desserts of my life there. That place was and is a huge part of my life John and I put in a lot of hours and myself into that place in the beginning, I met my wife there and now we have two beautiful children. I will miss it terribly. I still make cakes and cupcakes on the side I started a small business Sugar Daddy Cupcake and was selling them at RPS downtown as well as Hedge it was just too much for me to keep up with on a full time basis out of my house. My wife and I tossed around the idea of opening an “upscale” patisserie in town, but it never came to be.
I’ll do a post on this roofies thing tomorrow. Lot’s of evidence we’ve been hearing…
@65: Next time just ask. You can save your roofies for an unwilling victim.
Meh. F*ck a pastry. End your meal with another drink and move on.
@66: Do you think a patisserie would work in C-ville?
If I ever see evidence of some douchebag putting anything in someone else’s drink they will be wearing that drink up their ass.
cbob - please, please share. Wanna feed that fucknut his balls…
maybe all of the ex-pastry chefs should get together and start a super patisserie ohhhhhhhh yea. Investors anyone?
@50: It’s true. I, for one, haven’t been scared off, AND I’ve been to France (wow!), AND I use big words sometimes. But not italics…I guess my words just aren’t big enough for that.
If I ever see evidence of some douchebag putting anything in someone else’s drink they will be wearing that drink up their ass.
I am assuming this excludes bartenders.
Investors anyone?
I gots tree fiddy.
If anyone put a douchebag in my drink, I’d be upset too.
in Soviet Russia douchebags drink you.
/still doing it.
Yea but I am delicious.
ummm… The new cake place across from Fleurie kicks ass… Small, new, and a short list for now, but delicious…..
12hrs later, and I’m back. what did i miss?
Oh, making chocolates is sooo easy. If you don’t believe me, buy good chocolate and invite me over. I can show anyone how to make chocolate truffles.
White chocolate and orange is my favorite.
b-wilk doesn’t know shit about dick.
82: Hey, teetee! That was cute. And funny, actually. But here on the ol’ ‘Villain we have this rule against personal attacks. So, uh, be nicer? Thanks.
/oh and if you’d like to expound with an actual argument, by all means, sling it.
@83, what he said.
@81: You know how to make truffles? We can be friends.
you can get good pastries in this town, they just aren’t under one roof. The product a broad line distributor sells to restaurants are not always finished products. It is easier to buy those though, a “good” pastry chef will cost a minimum of 50k, put that with the product he/she would need to purchase and it gets pretty up there (vanilla bean ,cream, butter, chocolates et al) you can not get your money back on your investment. A chef had better be a bit more manager when or he has no where to cook, you can get a profit from buying desserts that work for you, make a profit and it not cost your 50k a year. It doesn’t make any business sense to have just a pastry chef, if a kitchens brigade can not perform the tasks across the board pastry, apps, entree/sauce and the like then you have problems and that employee(s) is/are a liability. What makes sense for the business is all it comes down to.
Oda, have you thought about it?
ooo this is getting interesting. Surprised we are at #88 and still on subject, congrats!
I wanna go get a pain au chocolat, still warm, and bite into it, the buttery flaky pastry hitting my lips, nestling two long bars of chocolate, which when I bite into, melt on my tongue, and I chew and there’s a mix of chocolate and croissant deliciousness in my mouth and I moan…
Oh wait, I can’t because we don’t have a patisserie. Anti-climax.
89: Shen, you must to be the change you wish to see in the [pastry] world. Gandhi [sort of] said that, so you know it’s true. Open up shop already.
@89 i have one right next door. maybe i’ll have a pain au chocolat for breakfast…
@91: Hate you.
@82: Aww teetee… thanks a-hole. Im going to towel-whip you soo m-f-ing hard tonight. YOUR ASS IS MINE!
@85: And yes, I can make truffle and can teach you.
@93: Let me guess, teetee works with you at whatever restaurant you work at. That’s funny. Glad it wasn’t just some random hateful lurker.
yeah, kids these days. what can you do?
Again, I dont’ know how you guys are missing this, but HotCakes has some very nice pastries… is it Payard? no…. but I enjoyed tonight a salted caramel tart with lucious milk chocolate, and a fresh strawberry tart with pistacio cream…… it is not downtown, but oh my god is it worth the travel to Barracks Rd. Dinner too, Pig Trotters? Awesome!
Wow - haven’t been to cvillains for awhile and looks like this conversation may be a little old - but it’s right up my dessert alley and so wanted to pop into the fold for a moment. As a local pastry chef who not only trained, but also worked in a patisserie in Paris, I found many of the comments interesting. For example, the “horror” over a frozen pain au chocolat - you’d probably die at the # of shops in Paris that serve frozen ones - and they’re really, really good (the shop I worked in was an artisan bakery, we did everything from scratch, but not one of the bakers would come right out and say the commercial stuff was substandard). Concerning working chocolate - heck yeah, ANYone can make a truffle. They are, indeed, easy. But try working tempered chocolate a la Gerheardt’s (sp) and you will find yourself in a WHOLE new territory. Maddeningly difficult to perfect the scientific art of it all. And it is doubtful that you will find a pastry chef willing to put the time and money into doing BOTH yeasted breads (need the additional room and equipment necessary for proofing the dough) and pastries… ABC can have the yeast, I’ll keep the butter and sugar alive as I currently do for enoteca and coming soon - cafe milano. Check it out at http://www.paradoxpastry.com (yeah, advertisement - please don’t yell “Run!!!!”)
@97 thanks for the info and I think it’s cool you put your website. I like the FAQ “Are you a nut-free facility?”
since you aren’t I’m sure you will fit in here nicely. Cvillain is certainly chock full of nuts.
[…] Food Stuff - You can’t forget this site is about food. Read things like our Guide to Local Food, our List of Restaurant Reviews or our Complaints About Not Having Good Pastries. […]
Why, oh WHY did I read this?!
/suffering from temporary acute sweet-toothiness…and a serious chocolate deficiency.
//…Help me…