212: Caroline Schiff

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. There's an energy, and I really am not being, like, even jokey about it. Like, there's such an energy there. There has to be. Like, you can't operate in that space and not feel the century-plus of people who came through there. And it's just amazing.

0:52You're listening to The Taste Podcast. I'm your host, Eliza Barbinell. There are some restaurants where skipping dessert is just not an option. And if you're in New York City, Gage and Tolner is at the top of that list. Pastry chef Caroline Schiff has created an all-star lineup of sweets that nod to the Chop House's historic past. It dates back to the late 1800s, while feeling totally fresh. On today's episode, she shares about her pastry philosophy, her take on the most iconic desserts in the city, and more. Caroline is a true pastry wizard, and I hope you'll enjoy.

1:34Caroline, thanks for coming on the Taste Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to have you in front of me with your iconic hair in person and everything else. I think it's going to be really fun. I am so excited to be here. And I was saying that it's so nice to do a podcast not over Zoom. Yeah, we are in real life, which means that I can make direct eye contact as I ask you to make me cheesecake every day for the rest of my life. I can make that happen. If we had, like, scheduled this later in the day, I would have gone to work first and brought you dessert. We should have thought of that.

2:08Okay, and this is a message to my past self if I can somehow tap in is to reschedule. You'll just come visit. Visit the restaurant. Anytime. I would love to come by again. And I'd love to start out with asking you a little bit about your thoughts on historical desserts. For people that aren't familiar, Caroline is the pastry chef at Gage and Tolner, which to me is one of the most iconic historic restaurants in New York, certainly in Brooklyn. And I'm sure that you did a lot of research about historical desserts that I'd love to get into. But to start, I'm curious if you could tell me about an underrated historical dessert that you think we should be trying to bring back in the same way that Baked Alaska has made a revival.

2:44Yeah, definitely. And it's been so cool to see the revival of the Baked Alaska, which is a Victorian era dessert. Like it just like seeing it pop up on menus and stuff like that. I just I love it. It's so fun. But the other one that I've been kind of playing around with lately, and I did a little video that's not out yet, but, you know, it's coming soon, about Nestle Road Pie. Have you heard of this? No, but I'm so intrigued. So I went down the Nestle Road rabbit hole because I got, like, really, really into this. So it's another like 19th century dessert that originated in Germany. And it was there was a guy named Karl Nesselrode and he was like he was like a diplomat to, I believe, the Russian Empire.

3:40And he was really well known for entertaining his, you know, friends and enemies and frenemies with like these opulent dessert spreads and kind of like trying to win friends and influence people with his desserts, which like I can totally relate to because that's how I make friends. but anyway so they were these like um frozen custards with like cherries and chestnuts and all of these like glassed fruits and things like that and then um it was sort of reinvented in new york in the 30s as a pie so like classic pie crust and then a custard that's like studded with like you know, all of these preserved fruits and nuts and there's like a chestnut cream.

4:30And so I kind of I made one recently and it has such a great story. And I love that it's already gone through like all of these iterations and reinventions. And so I'm just like, let's bring it back. What was the eating experience of it like? Is it creamy the whole way through? It's super creamy, but it has texture. And it's really nutty. And, you know, the custard is the creamy element. And then, like, I put, you know, traditionally it had, like, maraschino cherries in it. So I used some Luxardo cherries in there and chestnuts and all of that kind of stuff. It's really, there's something very, it's a wintry dessert, actually, in my mind.

5:18It, like, evokes the holidays and that kind of thing. But chestnuts roasting on the open fire. It's funny. Chestnuts to me in general feel a kind of a dated a dated nut. You know, I feel like you don't really eat them that often. Well, that's because of the chestnut blight. Oh, oh, no. The blight. Tell me more. Tell me everything. So this was in, I believe, the early 20th century. there was a disease that like, and this was part of the, I learned about this when I went down the Nessel Road rabbit hole of Wikipedia and the internet. There was a disease that kind of destroyed like all of the chestnut trees in North America.

6:03So all these chestnut trees basically were diseased and died off. So chestnuts kind of became sort of, you know, out of fashion, like you couldn't get them. So they never really like made a comeback in the United States. So even to this day, most of the chestnuts you get are imported. Yeah. That's so interesting. That kind of reminds me of the situation with currants in America. Are you familiar with this? No. Tell me more. I was writing about currant cassis, which is a really delicious cassis. Have you had that? I have it at home. It's delish. Actually, I think it would be really good in baking.

6:37I don't know if you've done anything with it. Totally. Like a cassis ice cream or something. Absolutely. So cassis historically is made from fermenting black currants, I believe. And for a long time, currants were illegal in the United States. Oh. I learned about this when I was writing about this cassis in particular. And it was basically because the cassis plants, I guess the current plants, were being affected by this one mite, I think, or some kind of pest that also was targeting the white oaks in the United States. And so the lumber, I don't know, lobbyists, I guess, of the era got Congress to ban currents because they thought that they were bringing over this mite that was going to be damaging to the lumber industry.

7:16And then it took a long time, eventually became like a state issue. And this one farmer in upstate New York who was really passionate about currents, basically single-handedly, to my knowledge, got New York State to allow currents. And now when you go to the green market here in New York again in the summer, you can see beautiful little jewel-like currants and you can get this cassis, but it's like a flavor that's pretty unfamiliar to Americans. I think, I don't remember if it's Jolly Rancher or Skittles, but I think the purple Skittle in Europe is actually currant flavored and here it's grape because currant is such an unfamiliar flavor to Americans that it wasn't even like in our lexicon until recently.

7:49Totally. I love the flavor of black currant. Have you ever had Ribena? I don't think so. What is that? It sounds like medicine. I know. It sounds like medicine. But so I went to university in Scotland and it's really, really popular there. It's like in all you can get like blackcurrant candies and Ribena is a brand of like blackcurrant juice. And they also make popsicles and like different soft drinks and stuff. And you can get it like anywhere, like every supermarket, any little like small grocery store, gas station, whatever. and it's a really really common flavor there and it was it was so new to me when I first went over there and I I kind of fell in love with it so I'm all about I'm all about black currant I love that and I love thinking about these flavors that you know because of larger context or just the way that things fall out of fashion are so particular to a time like that coming back again it makes me think about like what are the pastry chefs of the future going to look on as being emblematic of this era I feel like we're past the grown-up do you think there's something in this moment that's going to be dated in the future in that kind of historical way that is such a good question I'm not sure I mean part of like the beauty of you know food and food trends is that they're so cyclical and so it's like you know the baked Alaska was like so in fashion and then it was just so like nobody even knew what it was for years nobody had ever seen one and now it's like popping up on menus again.

9:20So I love this idea of, you know, the life cycle of like a flavor or a pastry or things coming in and out of fashion. So I don't know. And now we're seeing like, like, you know, Jell-O is having a moment and kind of coming back, which is like something that I never thought we would see. And now all of a sudden, like people are doing these like fantastic jello desserts and or like really 80s looking cakes. Those are sort of like making a comeback. So I don't know. I think there's like a there's like a certain, you know, nostalgia to all of this. But each time things come back around, I think somebody, you know, pastry chefs and, you know, artists and creatives like we we always sort of breathe new life into it a little bit.

10:14Yeah, I think that's true. It kind of reminds me of the way that denim can come back in style and maybe we're having like a baggy low rise moment, but it's not quite in that late 90s Y2K era. Right. You know, it's different. Thankfully. Thankfully to us all. Thank you. So on the topic of historical desserts, I'm curious about what your research process was like for when you were doing the revival of Gage and Tolnir. How much did you want to stick to the original menu and how did you go about navigating that? Yeah. Well, like the menus go all the way back to the, you know, it opened originally in the 1870s and it closed in 2004.

10:51So that's like so, there's so many menus and it went through so many iterations. It's wild. Were the menus like preserved somewhere just in this empty restaurant? We found them. Ooh. I know. It's like so haunting in like the coolest way. So the restaurant, you know, for anybody who's not familiar, so it, you know, it was operating for whatever, 150 something years or something like that. I'm sure my math is terrible. Close enough. And it was in, you know, it started in one location and then in the 1890s it moved to the current location just like a few blocks away on Fulton Street. and so it operated there until 2004 but in that time the space in the building the interior and exterior was landmarked so it's really beautifully preserved space and you can't touch it without permission and and review from the landmarks commission which is really really amazing so we worked very very closely with them in terms of bringing it back to life but because of that it really just sat there.

12:03And so when the team was able to get into the space, our head of PR and events, wonderful woman named Alex, she started just like poking around the space and found there's like a crawl, like it's not quite an attic. It's a little bit of like a crawl space. And she found boxes and boxes of old menus just like they were just there. Wow. It's like National Treasure Pastry Edition. Exactly. And it's – so we have them. And, you know, I mean we've put them in like a nice, you know, nice order now and like in like proper boxes so they don't get damaged and everything. But we had all of these menus to work off of and really understand, like, what the evolution of Gage and Tolner was in terms of the food and all the chefs that came through there and, you know, food trends and things like that.

13:06So I started looking at the menus, which is how I discovered Nestle Road Pie, because that appeared on the menu in the 1950s. and then what's really cool is there's stuff that is just so timeless there's like coconut pie which is just like love it decade after decade and like I could probably put that on the menu tomorrow and people would be like thrilled yeah like I would be thrilled yeah absolutely timeless Yes. Maybe I'll do it. And then you see these things like Nestle Road Pie that are there for like a blip and you're like, what was that? So there was a lot of, yeah, just going through old menus and also just like thinking about like the time periods in general and like what was happening in the world.

14:02Like, you know, the Depression, World War I, World War II, Prohibition, like the restaurant operated through all of these things. COVID was the second pandemic that this restaurant has been through, Spanish flu being the first. Literal goosebumps when you say that. I mean, the space is haunted in such a beautiful way. Like you feel. I have a story about this. Have you seen a ghost there? I have seen things and we have like there's an energy. And I really am not being like even jokey about it. Like there's such an energy there. There like there just there has to be. Like you can't operate in that space and not feel the, you know, century plus of people who came through there.

14:52And it's just amazing. I believe this. And the old mirrors, I think, are really what gives that effect to me. Every time I've been there and I'm looking at myself in the mirror because I'm vain, I'm expecting to see like a ghost in the mirror behind me or something like that. And when I was dining a gage in Tallner, most recently I was celebrating something with some of my friends and collaborators. And my friend was telling a story about how she was in Morocco and saw a ghost in a mirror that she believes is one of her ancestors. And we were, you know, very excited telling the story. Our server was chatting with us about it.

15:23And we told him that this was the story we were talking about. He looks at us and he goes, well, I think I asked him. I said, have you ever seen a ghost in Gage in Tallner? He said, you know, we tell a lot of stories about four women that were eating in this very booth.

15:38I think I know who your server was. I mean, everyone there has been so great, but that was really that was really fun for us. Yeah. OK, so you have this archive. Did you want to do everything as a reinterpretation or do you want to bring in new things? Well, I I thought about it in like kind of three different ways where it was like I wanted to honor, you know, the legacy of Gage and Tolner and what it was. But, you know, I didn't want it to be like some gimmicky throwback, like, you know, wax museum menu. Like I just, you know, recreating old desserts and menus, I think like you have to sort of breathe some new life into it.

16:23So there was like that aspect of it. And then thinking about like, OK, well, you know, Gage and Tolmer had continued to to operate through all these years, like what would have been the natural progression and the evolution? And then I also wanted to see myself in the menu and things that as a chef I love. So I kind of looked at it in those like three different avenues. And so there were some things from the older menus that I took and kind of reimagined and recreated in a certain way. But then it's like, you know, the baked Alaska was never on the menu with Agent Holner. But it was such a Victorian era dessert.

17:11And I just felt like it. For some reason, it just like it fits so well with the space that like I really wanted to see that on the menu. So there was there was a lot of like, you know, spokes to this wheel, so to speak. it also like I just I love old stuff like my apartment is all like antiques so it was like the space spoke to me it felt very comfortable right away like what we were doing there and what we what we wanted to do in terms of reopening that it it came so naturally like I feel like that process was so just for lack of a better better word it was like butter like it was just so smooth and and in this weird way it was really easy like creating these dishes so um and then you know thinking about like if you're coming to Gage and Tolner like what's the experience that you want to have after you've ordered Parker House rolls and a wedge salad and a you know fried chicken or a steak and you've had your raw bar, like, then what do you want, you know?

18:22I'm like, how do you top it off? Opulence is like the word that comes to mind for me. When you walk in even, you see the mirrors and the whole dining space and you're just like, oh, I'm leaning into this meal and I need to save room for dessert. Everything signals that to me. Yeah. And I love that you said that. And it's been so awesome to see how many people like really come in and commit to that experience and order dessert. I think a lot of pastry chefs find that like, you know, oh, maybe 20 % of guests order dessert. And I mean, I get to look at the, you know, numbers and books every day. And I can see that it's like 80 % of reservations or something like that on some nights, it's like even higher are ordering dessert.

19:07And it makes me so happy that like, even on a Monday, people are just like coming in and getting four courses like it's just the greatest thing ever so what's the experience like in the kitchen when you know that you're going to be making so much dessert I feel like that must be overwhelming to somebody that hasn't done it at that scale before I think you know in the beginning and like we so for people who have not like followed the the reopening of Gage and Tolner story we were originally supposed to open March 2020 so like we kind of like this is maybe like the ghosts coming up and being like if you want to reopen you're gonna have to get through something first right like let's let's see if you've got what it takes yeah um so we kind of like had to do it twice so we the first opening we um you know it was like early march and we're gearing up to open and we're doing soft opening and we're doing friends and family and we're having cocktail parties for our, you know, we funders and investors and this really amazing community that supported us in, you know, opening, opening this restaurant.

20:18And, and then all of a sudden, it was just like, you know, shut down. I mean, we all know what happened. So that whole experience was just like, such a roller coaster. And then like, you know, having to sit and wait and, and see you know what happened we were finally able to open uh april 2021 and um i really i credit the the partners um so he can ben schneider singin frazel with really like keeping the kind of keeping the dream alive throughout the pandemic like we obviously like we're closed like everybody didn't have a job you know we had we had no idea what was going on and um we would all get on zoom every week and have like zoom happy hour and stuff like that and like you know it was so it was so uncertain but I really credit them with like you know keeping our our spirits um alive during that time so anyway we kind of came back into it and it was like you know the world looked so different and we had to open at a very um small capacity I think when we opened it was at like indoor dining was at like 25 it was like whatever it was that that first like little chunk so in a way that was um really really great for like sort of slowly building momentum and understanding like okay how much dessert are people ordering what does service look like like we would do you know 30 covers a night which is nothing in that space and then the next week when they like you know up the number a little bit to like 35 we would do a little bit more and a little bit more and so it was sort of like a gradual build um I think coming into it and like ripping off the band-aid at like you know 290 covers 300 covers a night we would have gotten there anyway but it would have been a much bumpier ride uh-huh um so there was a silver lining to that that reduced indoor dining um and I think now it feels to me like we're in such a nice groove and we have such an incredible team now that it's I'll never say it's easy because like you know nothing's easy but we've really built up the team and the the infrastructure and the you know prep schedule and like everything you know is everybody has their knows knows what needs to happen.

23:17And in this way, it really just kind of is like chugging along really beautifully. And I'm really like so, so in awe of everybody every day. I'm just like, we have the best team. It's amazing. That's really nice. And I do think when you're dining there, it seems like a very like well-oiled machine of a restaurant. But I imagine that your Baldor order must be crazy just in terms of the amount of eggs and milk and butter that you're ordering. Yeah. Yeah. It's nuts. And I think like you know I've worked in also very very small restaurants where you you wear a lot of hats and you do everything because that's just how it has to be like you're the receiver and you know you're the prep cook and you're the expediter and you do all the ordering and all of that and so you know now we have like a whole like system and like receiver who like coordinates that and you You know, there's checklists and it's sure there's like thousands of pounds of food coming through the door every day.

24:21Yeah, there's a real like there's a real like method to the madness kind of. I'm sure. Yeah. So we're talking about iconic New York City restaurants and all of these things. And I know that you are born and raised here in New York. So I'm curious if you could give me like maybe three like iconic New York City desserts that really stick out to you that are not at G &T but elsewhere in the city. Such a good question. And I love that like if you asked 100 New Yorkers, you would get 100 different answers and they would be so good because like this is just like New York is you can get everything and everybody has their own story.

24:57So for me, if I'm thinking about like iconic New York desserts, one of the first that comes to mind is like New York cheesecake, which I adore. And we were talking about cheesecake, I think, before we started recording and how much we love it. So, yeah, like just like a really classic. Do you have a spot? Cheesecake. Not really. I love the like seeing everybody's iterations. I love making my own and obviously at Gage and Tolner I have like a goat cheese cheesecake on the menu which was like me putting you know a little bit of like my twist on it it's not a classic New York cheesecake at all which I think is really cool like we're you know like Juniors is right down the street and like you know I don't want to step on their toes right exactly so yeah really really great cheesecake um i think that uh i think about like jewish cookies a lot and rugelah that to me is a very very iconic um new york dessert um are you team cinnamon or team chocolate chocolate yeah i asked cinnamon but i've never heard anyone say Nobody says cinnamon.

26:21No one craves cinnamon. Nobody does. No. I mean, you know, I'm not going to like say no to a cinnamon regola, but I'm always going to pick the chocolate one. And then I would say like a really amazing chocolate babka. Yeah. I mean, my, you know, my experience and my background is Ashkenazi Jewish. And so those things are very like nostalgic to me and comforting and they feel very New York. And yeah, that's just kind of my, you know, experience. But I just I love that. We live in a city where we have access to like so much. Yeah. So much good stuff. Those are all great. I think I would I would add that mine is a Mr.

27:06Softy swirl. Oh, that's a good one. Recently I found out, I think last summer I found out that they have chopped peanuts that you can add to the ice cream. So that is my like ultimate. I actually think I have a problem because I can't say no if I'm walking and I see one. It's not a problem. Even if I'm going to dinner and I'm still stopping and eating a full ice cream because I have a scarcity mentality that it's not going to be around forever. And then if I say no to it now, I'm going to be, you know, sitting talking to you in March of next year and thinking about that one time that I didn't get it.

27:38And yeah, totally. I can relate to that. The other thing that's very nostalgic for me, because you said Mr. Softy and I'm like, oh, like this is my, maybe my Mr. Softy is they have them at like every bodega. Coconut, froze fruit, popsicles. Yes. But specifically the coconut one. It has like chunks of coconut in it. It's so good. And the second it is like about like 70 degrees or above in New York. Like I have to have one like once a week. Like it's just I don't know. There's something about it and it feels very I mean you can get them anywhere like but there's I don't know that experience of like having one and like walking to the park feels very New York to me in some way.

28:25I love this. You know, I think all food is transportive, but desserts, maybe because we all crave sugar or because sometimes you don't eat them every day. It's more of an occasion. Like they are so transportive in that way. And I think that's why it's so cool that you're nodding to history on this menu because it's nice to think about the fact that somebody could be sitting at the bar at Gage and Talner 150 years ago and eating a version of a cheesecake or something like that. Right. Yeah. It kind of it gives me goosebumps in the best way. And I love that we mark celebrations with dessert. You know, I don't want to use the word treat, but it's like, oh, like this wonderful thing happened today.

29:02Let's celebrate with like an ice cream cone after work. Yeah. Or the ice cream cone after work is the celebration itself. Yes, yes, definitely. So good. I feel like we're talking a lot about pastry and sweets, but I know that you do savory baking as well, both at the restaurant and in general. And I know you did a sourdough book, which is actually the sweet side of sourdough. So back on that side. But I'm curious, like, if you're baking bread at all these days. Oh, yeah. Do you have time? Well, not so much at home. But I do at home, but it's not like the daily routine anymore because I just I don't have time.

29:38But was that a pandemic era thing for you? I do all the breads at Gage and Tolner. And when the first, you know, when COVID hit, we had our sourdough starter. And I was like, well, I can't like I'm not going to leave her here to die. Does she have a name? Edna, after Edna Lewis, who was the chef at Gage and Tolner. But you can't let the Edna Lewis starter die? Which, like, she was the chef at Gage and Tolner. So iconic. Towards the end of her career, she was, like, in her 70s. And she was, like, she had her own little, like, space, like, her sacred space where she would make her pies. And, like, she was a real icon.

30:19But anyway, so we had our sourdough starter. And I was like, well, we're not going to let her die. So I take her home and I'm feeding her every day. And so I'm baking every day. And then I like totally just it's like bread overload. You can't you're like and it was COVID. Like it's not like I'm like going to dinner parties bringing people bread. So then I started to think about what else I could put my sourdough starter in. And that's sort of how the book happened. But at work we do a beautiful panel event every day with some farmer ground flowers. and like that to me is everybody comes and gets the Parker House rolls, which are so delicious and so buttery.

31:04But I actually, if I had to choose like one of the breads to eat forever, it would be the Peno Levin. Hot take, honestly. I know. I know. And I always tell people that. And I think it's like, yes, you have to get the Parker House rolls when you come to Gage and Tolner. The first time you have to, it's like, it's not a rule, but it's not not a rule. Why? Just because they're so iconic to the restaurant? I think they're iconic to the restaurant. They're an amazing way to start the meal. They come with like, there's literally like a pool of butter. Like just, they're like piping hot, tear them apart.

31:36They're like steaming. There's flaky salt on them. It's just like. They kind of look like little butts. Yeah. They kind of look like cute little butts. We love it. So you really need to have that experience. But the second time you come, get the Penelivan because it's crusty, it's tangy, and I think it is such like a perfect thing to have alongside like salad, soup, whatever else you're eating. and then it's like you know if you're not you get a quarter of loaf you know per order like if you don't finish it take it home toast it the next day it's like the perfect breakfast so I love that bread and we're making that every day along with Pullman loaves all the Parker house I do like a seeded rye for certain things.

32:30I do a pumpernickel for one of the savory dishes. What else? And did you keep any of Edna for your home use when you brought her back to the restaurant? Yeah. So I have a little bit at home, which, and at this point, like I don't, at home, I don't feed her every day. She's like kind of, she hibernates. And that's the beautiful thing about sourdough starter that I think a lot of people don't realize is that like you can put them into like a hibernation or like a dormant in the fridge state in the fridge and they bounce back pretty quickly yeah yeah I was on the sourdough game for a while before the pandemic started maybe two months before I got into sourdough baking which was very convenient timing for so for the world um but then I just like I ran out at a certain point of like emotional energy I think to do it yeah yeah it is It is, I mean, you have to feed it.

33:28Like, you have to nurture it. And so it's like, you can get burnout. Yeah, you know, to be honest, I was having a hard time taking care of myself in that moment. And so taking care of my bread was getting stressful. And then luckily now, you know, I live in a city where I can get great sourdough. You can get great bread everywhere. Do you have a favorite? I mean, She-Wolf to me is my go-to. I used to live in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and I still go to the farmer's market. Oh, that's where I live. Yeah. I feel like I used to see you. Oh, my gosh. You see your hair kind of bobbing around, which is also something I have to ask you.