 by Jerry Novesky Issue 47 (September-November 09) [Copyright © 2009, The Valley Table] On a slow day, maybe 700 people will walk into the Apple Pie Bakery Cafe. Up to a third of them will be students; half again of that will be faculty and staff, and the remainder tourists and visitors. On a busy day, up to triple that number will line up through the bakery's massive French entry doors. They're not there just to have cupcakes or a croissant. Many have come to have a cup of coffee and eat a work of art. Desserts are the big draw at the popular bakery cafe in Roth Hall, the main building on the Culinary Institute of America's campus in Hyde Park. But an enticing lunch menu that includes sandwiches and salads, and new late afternoon/early supper fare that may include pork chops with smashed potatoes, salmon, duck confit or other "snacks," keep the doors swinging all day long. This is the domain of Chef Francisco Migoya, Assistant Professor in Baking and Pastry Arts, and here, students must learn fast. In fact, in what is arguably the busiest eatery on campus, time is everything. "When you go through the program, you learn how to temper chocolate, you learn how to make bread, you learn how to make custards--and you have a seven-hour time frame in which to accomplish certain things," Migoya says. "It's the most important thing--learning how to prioritize and always thinking, 'What is my next step, what is my next step?' That's what they learn here--time management. We help them figure it out the first few days, but after that, they start cooking and they figure out how to make their lives easier, how to work faster, how to be more efficient. That's something that you can't really learn unless you're in this type of environment." For Migoya, formerly the executive pastry chef at California's famed The French Laundry, the creativity that goes into the desserts--sometimes whimsical (how about a glass of cake and slice of milk?), sometimes almost magical (yes, those are real plants in the terrarium, along with layers of lemon curd, lychee gelee and espresso "dirt")--is tempered by reality: The desserts may be on display, they may have to be packaged for take out, or they may require fresh topping or sauce to finish. "A [high-end] restaurant dessert is something you plate to order and put a sauce on and send it out. We can't do that. We have to think about desserts that are there, finished," Migoya observes. "How do you put sauce on a dessert that is going to be in a display case? Put it in a little pouch and keep it fresh and have the customers pop it and sauce the dessert themselves. That's why we have all our desserts in containers, too--because that keeps [them] fresh longer. We have little eyedroppers with sauce in them that you squeeze onto your dessert--the sauce is not sitting on it all the time, it's fresh and completely enclosed. You just squeeze it onto the dessert and then you eat it. Cooking is science." There is science and there is art everywhere you turn at the bakery. And then there is business. A big part of the business (and teaching) there is to make sure the customers are not only getting the desserts and other fare they want, but that they'll be able to get it again tomorrow, whether it's peaches and cream (peach nectar "balloon" joconde cake crumbs, panna cotta, vanilla creme anglaise, almond crunch and peach compote), lemon meringue pie (lemon curd with sable cookie bits in an oversized shot glass, topped with baked Italian meringue), or just the best chocolate chip cookie you've ever had. "You know, you can have the fanciest desserts in the world," Migoya notes, "but if you don't have what people come to get every day and you don't do it right, they're not going to come again. "We always have the apple pie. I mean, we are the 'Apple Pie Bakery.'If we were the Strawberry Shortcake Bakery, we'd have strawberry shortcake all the time. And you know we'd do the best that we possibly can." Apple Pie Bakery Cafe, Roth Hall, Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, (845) 452-9600, www.ciachef.edu, Open 7:30AM-6:30PM |
){kind=link}