John Caluda
Coffee Cottage
New Orleans LA
http://www.coffeecottage.com

‚“This is what I always wanted to do,‚” says John Caluda, proud chef-proprietor of the Coffee Cottage on Metairie Road. ‚“Open up a pastry shop in my old neighborhood — one that would make fresh pastries daily for people who would appreciate them.‚”

Caluda, a Culinary Institute of America (Hyde Park, New York) graduate, is a pastry natural. ‚“One of the first things I ever made was chocolate eclairs when I was about 10 years old.‚”

His professional experience ranges from being the chief steward-baker for a crew of 300 on an oil rig the size of a football field in the Gulf of Mexico, to being executive pastry chef at the Royal Orleans Hotel in New Orleans. When he was baking on the oil rig his reputation spread, and people would take a helicopter to the rig to pick up pastries and fly back with them to the other rigs in the vicinity.

Caluda opened and operated the World´s Fair Beignet Cafe at the World´s Fair in New Orleans, 1984. He was the pastry cook and baker at Hotel Iberville, and the executive chef at Flagons Wine Bar, both in New Orleans. He opened and operated two Italian bistro-style restaurants called Sweet Basil´s, one in New Orleans and one in Panama City Beach, Florida.

After two years in Florida and the birth of their first child, Caluda and his wife decided to move back home to Louisiana. ‚“I always liked this little spot on Metairie Road and had looked at it before, so when it became available I decided to take it and open the Coffee Cottage. Part of the charm of this place is atmosphere as well as food. It´s like a counter coffee shop, open 7:30 a.m. to 11 at night. And we serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I´d rather have nice, down-home cooking than a beautifully presented plate all the time.‚”

His customers agreed, because after the Great Chefs television shoot, he enlarged the kitchen to three times its original size. And then he lost his lease on the cute little cottage with the porch at the end of December, 2004. Then Katrina happened. And now John Caluda and Coffee Cottage are back. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and now entertainment. And, always, great food and perhaps even greater pastries.

When people ask how come his pastries are so light and flaky, he says, ‚“There´s no secret to it. I use fresh ingredients — and they were just made an hour ago.‚”

Jacquy Pfeiffer
The French Pastry School
Chicago IL
http://www.frenchpastryschool.com

Founder of the French Pastry School in Chicago, Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer managed and coached the 2002 World Pastry Champion team. In 2003 he was at it again. Pfeiffer´s coaching and teaching abilities were honored in 2002 when he received the prestigious Jean Banchet Award for Best Culinary School.

Jacquy Pfeiffer was born into a French family which ran a bakery in Alsace. Growing up underfoot, an unofficial part of the bakery, Pfeiffer learned breadmaking and fine pastry like most children learn their ABCs. After getting his high school diploma he signed on as an apprentice at Jean Clauss´s pastry shop in Strasbourg. Clauss, one of the finest culinarians in the country, shared his knowledge and discipline. Along with the apprenticeship, Pfeiffer learned food technology, business, and marketing at Balding Grein College. Upon graduation, he was named Best Apprentice (Alsace, 1978). But he knew his real apprenticeship had just begun.

Pfeiffer worked in various pastry and confectionery shops in Strasbourg for two years, winning one silver and two gold medals in competition. Joining the Navy in 1980, he was named private pastry chef to Admiral P. Leyeune aboard the La Charente in the Indian Ocean, creating special desserts for visiting heads of state, generals, and admirals. Back in France he went to work for caterer Haegel to perfect special skills. Then it was off to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia to work as pastry chef at an exclusive shop. In the bargain he set up the company´s recipe files and trained the staff of 33. Pfeiffer next moved to Al Jubail International Hotel in Riyadh. Working in the city gave him exposure to Indian and Arabic pastries and desserts.

Upon completing his service duties, Chef Pfeiffer accepted a position in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as the Executive Pastry Chef for the Royal Family.

In 1986 Pfeiffer took a position at a French bakery in Palo Alto, California, south of San Francisco. With a staff of 15 he was in charge of wholesale production, catering for IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Sun Micro Systems, and Stanford University. By the end of the ‘80s he was at the Hyatt International in Brunei, and working for the Sultan of Brunei as his private pastry chef. Among the extraordinary experiences was catering many state dinners for 2500 Р5000 guests, and a national banquet for 15,000 persons lasting three days. Following his days in Brunei, Pfeiffer went to the Hyatt Regency in Hong Kong as executive pastry chef, cross-training to learn dim sum techniques. In 1992 he returned to the U.S. to work at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Chicago. That same year he competed and won the gold medal at the National Pastry Chef Competition in New York. Pfeiffer continued to perfect his techniques with blown sugar, chocolate, and pastillage; while at the Fairmont the hotel received the award for the best Chaine des Rotisseurs dinner in Chicago, with an almost-perfect score. His next move, to the new Sheraton Hotel and Towers in Chicago, put him in a state-of-the art pastry shop in a hotel with 1200 rooms, five restaurants, and a ballroom seating 4000. It is a venue big enough to let him exercise his formidable skills.

His passion for teaching led him to open the French Pastry School at City Colleges of Chicago in 1995. It is now one of the nation´s leading pastry schools; students enrolled in the 24-week course study with Pfeiffer and John Kraus, and with a host of guest instructors including Great Chefs Norman Love and Sebastian Canonne. Log on to their website, www.frenchpastryschool.com, for a look at the edible art taught at the school!

Pfeiffer´s enthusiasm has also led him into competition. Among his honors are
competing as a 1995 U.S. Team member in the Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie in Lyon, France (bronze medal); winning the 1995 National Chocolate Competition, Masters of Chocolate, which allowed Chef Pfeiffer to then compete in Paris at the Grand Prix International de la Chocolaterie (first prize for presentation and second prize overall for his masterpiece, ‚“Lore of Flight‚”); captaining the 1996 U.S. Team in the Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie (silver medal); and being part of the winning 2000 National Pastry Championship Team in Beaver Creek, Colorado. Pfeiffer was named one of the Top Ten Pastry Chefs in the United States by both Chocolatier and Pastry Art & Design magazines in both 1996 and 1997, invited, with six other chefs, to the White House in 1998 to create a confectionery showpiece for the White House Easter Egg Roll; and awarded a place on the Chicago Tribune´s Good Eating Honor Role, which recognizes ‚“members of the food industry making a difference in Chicago through their commitment, quality, vision and zeal‚”. Pfeiffer and Sebastian Canonne were invited to consult for the Rhapsody restaurant in Chicago, as well as the Atlantis Hotel in the Bahamas.

Steve Young
Fourways Inn
Bermuda
http://www.fourwaysinn.com

Fourways Inn is nearly three centuries old, a private home, then a restaurant, and a guest house. It was built in 1727 of native coral stone and cedar, commissioned by John Harvey, of Harvey’s Bristol Cream fame, as his home. It was aptly named Fourways because it spread modestly in all four directions and was enclosed within two-and-a-half acres of walled gardens at Amen Corner, a vital crossroads in Bermuda. Hospitality was its hallmark from the beginning; when Mr. Harvey’s guests came for his elaborate dinners, they were offered overnight accommodations because of the distance they had to travel to the home. Fourways was the private home for the Harvey family and several other owners for more than two centuries before becoming a guest home. When Walter Sommer and a group of local businessmen took it over in 1976, they vowed to turn it into Bermuda’s top restaurant — and it opened to immediate local and international acclaim. Expansion brought a pastry shop as well as other facilities.

Steve Young, who was born in Glasgow, worked at a number of establishments in Glasgow, including the Royal Automobile Club, the Central Hotel, and the Grosvenor Hotel.  Then he was on to Jersey to work at the Grand Hotel and Hotel de la Plage. In 1986, Steve Young’s career intersected with Fourways Inn when he arrived to work at the restaurant. Working his way up through the ranks, in 1995 he became executive chef, overseeing the restaurant, pastry shop, and special events. Young has kept the French haute cuisine which earned Fourways Inn its reputation, lightening and modernizing to reflect today’s dining habits. Fourways Inn is an AAA 4-Diamond restaurant under his leadership.

Rebecca Naccarato
as taped at
Rebecca's, and Gordon's
Aspen, CO

Rebecca Naccarato, whose desserts graced the Lake Tahoe restaurant Gordon's when she was taped for Great Chefs of the West, is a product of the apprenticeship system of training. Both she and her then-husband Gordon learned in the kitchen at Michael's in Santa Monica. She was naturally inclined to baking and gravitated to the pastry station. As her husband operated Gordon's, she ran her pastry shop, Rebecca's, and provided desserts for Gordon's.

These days Rebecca Naccarato is no longer working in a restaurant. Now she is passing along what she knows, offering classes in Edmonds, Washington.

Klaus Helmin
Tivoli Restaurant
Rosslyn VA
http://www.tivolirestaurant.net

Klaus Helmin grew up in Berlin just after World War II, so his early childhood food memories are not what enticed him into the culinary world. “My mother prepared plain German food. Because of the war, we only had access to the bare essentials,” he says. This could explain why Helmin gravitated towards Northern Italian cuisine, which he has been creating as executive chef of the critically acclaimed Tivoli Restaurant since 1983.

With its combination of stunning interior design and Helmin’s cooking expertise, Tivoli has made the northern Virginia business enclave of Rosslyn, not normally noted for its after-business-hours appeal, a Mecca for lunch and dinner crowds. Commenting on the restaurant’s décor, one critic noted that “in Tivoli’s dramatically mirrored third story dining room, the tables are set in niches, corners, and at angles so that diners in the 175 seats have both a sense of privacy and of being right in the middle of the party.”

The restaurant focuses on innovative Italian fare, and Helmin’s signature dishes include Terrina di Piccione e Funghi Selvatici (Terrine of Squab Breast and Wild Mushrooms) and Coniglio in Umido alle Olive Nere (Braised Rabbit with Black Olives), as well as his Crepes with Oranges.

After graduating in 1957 from the Hotel and Restaurant School in Berlin, Helmin came to the United States to work in Wichita, Kansas, at the Broadview Hotel. In 1963, he opened the Washington Hilton Hotel as the executive sous-chef, and later became a partner in the Restaurant Corporation of America, which operated the Watergate Restaurant, Les Champs Restaurant, and the Watergate Pastry Shop. After selling his share of the corporation, Helmin, along with several colleagues, founded the American Restaurant Corporation, which operate Tivoli Restaurant, two Tivoli Gourmet shops, and the Watergate Pastry Shop. Tivoli Restaurant provides pre-theatre, post-theatre, lounge, full restaurant, Sunday brunch buffet, gourmet shop, and bakery services. This variety of food options does not faze Helmin. “I love to experiment with new ideas. This makes the task of creating new dishes exciting,” he says.

Dominique Leborgne
La Palais du Chocolat
Washington, D.C.

In Washington, D.C., there are many monuments but few palaces. That’s why, when customers entered Dominique Leborgne’s white marble Palais du Chocolat and saw rows of milk chocolate pyramids, cocoa-dusted bittersweet truffles, and beautiful bonbons filled with Cointreau and Armagnac, they wondered: Is this really Washington? Or Paris? Or maybe Willy Wonka’s?

Leborgne came from Armentieres, a small town in the north of France. At fifteen, he refused to work in his parent’s gourmet shop, and instead apprenticed at the pastry shop across the street. “Since I was fourteen I wanted to do this,” said Leborgne, “and I didn’t want anything else.”

Winner of the Grand Prix Internationale de la Chocolaterie and a gold medalist at the World Gastronomic Exposition and the Charles Prouse competition, among many other awards, Leborgne arrived in Washington from France in 1986 to open the Willard Inter-Continental Hotel as pastry chef.

Before joining the international hotel chain, Leborgne trained at the prestigious Dalloyau pastry shop in Paris. It was there he learned the ways of artistic form and dramatic presentation. Winner of the Golden Medal of St. Michel, the patron saint of pastry chefs, for a chocolate creation of a five-foot Venus rising from a bed of flowers, Leborgne made his creations look as good as they tasted. “I love the precision and artistic work,” he said. This attention to taste and beauty shone through in his creations. One secret — besides his talents — was the use of Guanaja chocolate, which is about 70 percent cocoa butter, unlike most American chocolate, which is usually around 40 percent. Cocoa butter reinforces the chocolate flavor, but often American chocolate makers substitute other lower-quality fats for the cocoa butter and the chocolate flavor suffers. French, Belgian, and Swiss chocolate also found its way into his desserts, depending upon the use.

Dominique Leborgne was an absolute master of his art.

Michel Richard
Citronelle, Central Michel Richard
Washington, D.C.
http://www.citronelle.com

Michel Richard is a rarity: a French chef in the United States who is as concerned about diet as he is about flavor. Of course, after working with Michel Guerard, the father of ‘cuisine minceur,’ at Eugenie-les-Bains, he’s convinced that the two concerns need not be mutually exclusive.

“There is definitely a French tradition that is based on fresh flavors,” says the chef-owner of the chic California-style Citronelle in Washington, D.C. “We use the term ‘pointu,’ meaning they have an edge that enlivens them. The minute you add butter and cream, that changes, and the honest flavors are dulled.”

Richard’s cuisine is vibrant with flavor, as anyone who has tasted his Muscovy duck with Pinot Noir and bacon sauce, his chicken ravioli with herb sauce, or his sauteed salmon with beet sauce and green beans, will attest. In fact, many body-conscious Californians would be surprised to know that Richard got his start, and still excels, not in carrot sticks but in French pastry.

Entranced by his first sight of a professional kitchen when he was only 8 (“The white hats and aprons and all of the food — I fell in love!”), Richard is a classically trained chef from Rheims in the Champagne district in France. Richard worked first with dessert master Gaston Lenotre. In 1975 he traveled to New York with Lenotre to open a pastry shop. Then he spent a decade in Los Angeles running his own pastry shop, making his signature light desserts. Eventually, he opened Citrus, where he serves the same sort of desserts, plus a complete menu to match. And then on to Citronelle, his signature restaurant in Washington, D.C. There have been more honors than you could count, including four AAA diamonds, four Mobil stars, listing by Gourmet as one of the top 20 restaurants in the U.S. — on top of his California awards which included “Best Chef, California,” from the James Beard Foundation. Central Michel Richard, also located in the Capital, is another incarnation of his aesthetic, encouraging conversation and relaxation over excellent food. He's also opened in Carmel.

“I was tired of hearing how French food is heavy,” he said. “And I was tired of seeing the French open the same restaurants here as they would in France.”

Richard wanted his restaurant to be classy but not stuffy, and the light, bright decor mirrors both the name of the place and the style of the cooking. His cooking is mostly done without using butter, cream, or flour, yet even the sauces are smooth and substantial, their consistency achieved with herb and vegetable purees. Guilt-free desserts are offered, although Richard also turns out more decadent pleasures. The idea is not one of deprivation, Richard insists, but of moderation. “You have to adapt to the lifestyle of your customer,” he says. “This is not Normandy.”
 

Mara Rocha Mello
Cafe Patisserie
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Mara Rocha Mello doesn’t try to get around it: her sweet tooth was among the influences which led her to become a pastry chef. That, and her love of making delicious and artistic creations to please people.

Mello began her studies at Brookes University in Oxford, England, studying business administration. She trained for her culinary career at the New York Restaurant School and Peter Kump’s Cooking School. Mello went to work at Brunela Confeitaria & Afins in Sao Paulo, then moved to CIA de Eventos Gastronomicos, and on to Roanne Restaurant, both in Sao Paulo. She worked at three-star Raphael, four-star Chanterelle and Nobu, and Francoise Payard’s bistro and pastry shop in New York City. In 1997 Mello worked at four-star Le Cirque, home of legendary pastry chef Jacques Torres, also in New York City, In 1998 she returned to Sao Paulo, opening Cafe Patisserie. Mello finds her inspiration in the wide variety of fresh ingredients available in Sao Paulo, but her influences are from Francois Payard and Peter Kump. At home? Pasta and risotto. At work, divine confections.
 

Every day Great Chefs searches the web for news about our celebrity chefs, here’s an article we hope you’ll enjoy.

With the opulence and reverent air of a lavish jewelry salon, award-winning pastry chef Jean-Philippe Maury introduces the first truly European-style pastry shop to Las Vegas. Located within Bellagio’s luxurious new Spa Tower

Source: http://www.vegaspopular.com/2007/04/03/the-jewel-box-of-patisseries-bellagio-s-jean-philippe-patisseri/

Every day Great Chefs searches the web for news about our celebrity chefs, here’s an article we hope you’ll enjoy.

I was aware of this pastry shop and it was on my itinerary to visit, and fortunately, I was able to get a private tour with the chef-owner, Christian Escriba and his project director Xavier Marco, through PRODECA, the governm

Source: http://www.thequenelle.com/2009/12/pastisseria-escriba-barcelona.html