1. Being a pastry chef these days is tough. Patrons and restaurants just don’t seem to put as much stock in desserts as they do the rest of the menu. How do you think we get beyond this and make desserts a significant part of the dining experience, again?
I think it depends where you are, what restaurant you’re at, or where you are eating. Our dessert sales here are very high. If we do sixty covers, we’ll sell between forty-five to fifty desserts.

You have to anticipate what guests want and at the same time you have to give them something different. That something that makes them think just a little bit, that, hmmm? That’s sounds interesting – why don’t I try that. Something comforting, something different…something new. You have to mix it up.

You’re whole thing is to please your guests and ultimately, that’s what you succeed in doing. You do it for yourself, yes. But you do it for pleasing the people as well. And keep it interesting. For example, it’s a Four Season’s standard to have a cheesecake of some sort. Right now on the menu I feature a Dutch Apple Cheesecake En Croute that I serve in a basket with sage ice cream. It has peaked a lot of people’s interest and it’s become very popular.

2. Meridith Ford, the new reviewer for the AJC, is a former pastry chef. She has only done a handful of reviews up to this point, but do you think she has put more of an emphasis on desserts in her reviews than John Kessler?
Well, I would hope being an ex-pastry chef she would. (laugh)

She’s pastry smart, knows what she’s looking for and she knows her flavors. When I go out to a restaurant, a lot of times I don’t have dessert because I know what the dessert is. I’m more interested in the food because I work with desserts all the time. And, being a pastry chef, I compete with myself. I’m aware of what other people do as far as desserts are concerned. So, I wanna taste the food first. Then, if there’s room, and if I think it’s something that is going to be really spectacular or different – then I’ll get dessert. And, I think she’d be the same way being from the same school.

3. It appears to me that there is a severe lack of pastry chefs in this great dining city – is it just me – or have you noticed the same?
I think, not only locally or nationally, but worldwide there is a shortage of pastry chefs. Umm, with being a pastry chef you have to not only be creative and know your technique, you have to be an artist as well. People eat with their eyes and they taste the flavors.

Pastry chefs have to be supported and encouraged. If you take care of a pastry chef, they’ll take care of you. Like anything else – it’s a partnership. And, I think that’s what’s lacking.

Whenever there’s a problem, it’s always -- send them something, send them a dessert on the house. But in return you must take care of the pastry chef and pastry department. Like I said, it’s a partnership. But nobody sees it like that.

I never understood why Executive Pastry Chefs and Executive Chefs are treated so differently in some places, and some companies, when they go hand in hand.

Take Kevin Rathbun, he’s made Kurt Parks (Rathbun’s pastry chef) a partner. Kevin takes care of him, and in return Kurt takes care of Kevin. Again, you work well together under those kinds of circumstances.

A pastry chef puts in anywhere from ten to sixteen hours a day, six days a week. It is your life, if you are a top pastry chef – it is your life.

So you want to be taken care of, you want the partnership. But if it’s not there, of course you’re going to move on. That’s why so many pastry chefs from France that have come here, they say NO, then they go back and they open up their own business.

4. In my opinion, you are the most progressive and innovative pastry chef in town. How do you keep coming up with such creative and cutting edge ideas that continue to work, year after year? Doesn’t the well ever run dry?
I hope not. I’m obsessed with desserts and pleasing people. I challenge myself every day, I wanna do something better than an anything I’ve ever done before. Every chocolate buffet I want to have fourteen to sixteen new items, every season. I push myself because I enjoy it. I dream desserts, I sleep desserts, I live desserts…it is my life. And, I love it.

5. Park 75’s new Executive Chef, Robert Gerstenecker, seems to be somewhat more progressive than Kevin Hickey, does a change in chefs like this affect what you do, and don’t do, with your desserts?
Actually, I have the freedom to basically please the guest. You co-exist with the executive chef.

Robert is wonderful. He has done pastry so he’s pastry smart. I can throw ideas around with him and I’ll push myself even more now. It’s wonderful – it’s a breath of fresh air.

6. In your opinion, what, if anything, can the local publications do to enhance the dessert scene here in Atlanta?
Interesting, I was talking to a friend of mine, a pastry chef at the Charleston Place Hotel, and he wants to do some events like a twelve-course meal, but all pastries. This would allow us to show how desserts can be sweet and savory, and how that can be paired with different wines, and different cordials. I think promoting ideas like this would help peak the public’s senses and interest.


Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to meet with me, chef.
Thank you, Tom.