762: Amanda Perdomo Is Your Favorite Pastry Chef’s Favorite Pastry Chef

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0:52When we serve the grits, we serve them with a pat of butter, salt, and fresh cracked black pepper. And I describe that in moments of training with staff. I describe it as an act of care. Yeah. We don't have to do that. You could do it yourself. You do that because it's an act of love. It's just, it's perfect. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel.

1:21Amanda Perdomo is a pastry chef raised in Louisiana and based in New York. She spent over a decade working in some of the city's best restaurants and as a freelance baker. And a few months ago, she launched a pop-up showcasing Louisiana cooking, Amanda's Good Morning Cafe. The weekday breakfast and lunch pop-up inside the restaurant Strange Delight has been a runaway hit, with homemade po 'boys, deep-fried cinnamon buns, and fancy desserts. Today on the show, we go deep on Louisiana cooking, the stakes of running a pop-up, and what's next. Amanda Perdomo, this is Taze. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

1:57Yes, I'm happy to be here. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm so obsessed with your pastries and your mind that invents all of these things. So I think it's gonna be really fun to get to chat. Awesome. Yes, I'm excited. To start off, I want to get just a little bit of insight into how you kind of began to think about food. And I'm wondering if you would share an early food memory with me that you think somehow informs your point of view today. I have one that comes to the top of my mind just because I think I had to revisit it recently just through the pop-up and just through trying to recipe develop and come up with some fancy desserts.

2:34When I was a kid, my first birthday cake, and I actually, I talked to him about this cake recently because I think this is the cake that actually activated me and my love and obsessions for dessert. Because when I reflect back, this is truly the first dessert memory that I have. I don't even remember which birthday it was, but it was the first birthday cake that I remember blowing the candles out of. My mom isn't much of a cook, so she obviously went and bought the cake. But the cake is a very traditional New Orleans-style cake. It's called a dough bash cake. And the cake traditionally is chocolate and lemon cake.

3:18And it's split right in the middle. And one half of it's chocolate, one half of it's lemon. And there are only two slices in the entire cake where you can get a little bit of both. The inside is filled with chocolate and vanilla puddings and or lemon pudding. And it's covered in chocolate ganache. It's the most memorable dessert that I remember having that I still think of to this day. And if you come to the cafe, we run a special sometimes that's called The Great Divide. And it's not exactly lemon. It's passion fruit. if I could reinvent that cake it would be with passion fruit and every single bite has a little bit of passion fruit and a little bit of chocolate so nobody has to fight for that those one those two slices that have just a bit of everything so I've had this cake it's a spectacular cake and I love that you're you're healing the trauma of having to fight over the two slices by making everyone so it's basically like for lack of a better word the left side would be lemon and the right side would be chocolate.

4:26And this is a layered cake. So every slice has both together. Yeah. Oh, I love that. That's so interesting to me. And I feel like all of my friends that work in the food industry in New York all seem to know you and love you and have worked with you at a restaurant at somewhere along the way in your career. I'm sure there's a lot to talk about, but I wonder if just broad strokes you could tell me about like when you first came to food as a career and like sometime about how you like developed as a chef here in New York. I guess I moved to New York maybe 2014, maybe almost 12 years ago. And I honestly moved here with a thousand bucks.

5:06I thought that was a lot of money at the time, a one-way ticket. And I think I had a box of stuff that I mailed here to a friend. And I had no sense of direction. And I think like within the first three months of living in New York, I had this moment of like, how do I stay here? And the only thing that I could think of that I was good at was cooking. And I immediately enrolled into culinary school. and through culinary school, I worked a full-time job. I worked a full-time job working at, you're going to laugh, I worked at Dominique Ancel. That was my first pastry job in the city. That's iconic, honestly.

5:53It's honestly quite iconic. It was peak cronut era. So there was very much like a, you know, the line was outside. It was my first introduction to virality. I guess at the time I didn't really understand what was happening, but I knew that people were really excited over this thing. Now, I mean, that's my bakery experience because from there I never worked in a bakery again. I left there and I immediately, through a friend, I got connected to someone in the kitchen at Del Posto. And this was an epic era. The restaurant had just been taken over by a female chef, Melissa Rodriguez. They were just coming out of the Mark Ladner era.

6:42Brooks Headley had just left a legacy there. um um and that that was like that was what made me feel obsessed with food and obsessed with restaurants and from there i mean the only reason i left del posto was because now this this was epic i left del posto to work under natasha pikowitz during her era at um cafe ultra paradiso floor bar which was iconic that was around when i moved to new york like 2017 is when i moved to New York and those were the restaurants that everyone was so excited to go to and Natasha's baking and like pastry was being talked about in such a big way so I could see how that would be exciting I begged for that job like I hands and knees no not even hands and knees but like I I remember I would just continuously message her because I was just in love with like I guess her ethos of cooking and I think the way that she plated things that were to me approachable and unpretentious and it felt like something that I could understand and I felt connected to it and I begged for that job and finally she remembered me and she I think I asked for a job like three times like just checking in seeing like like do you have any and honestly it says something when you know a chef any chef can be like we just nobody leaves yeah good sign that never happens anymore but i remember that being the case she had this team of superstar people who now are all like we're all still friends but now they're all doing some like iconic things like lauren showfield um iconic cakes in demand like the in-demand wedding cake baker in new york absolutely like uh um kirsten lee she is um the the wingman of of zoe cannon at elbow just really good chefs.

8:41And eventually she remembered me. She reached out and she's like, hey, if you want to come in for a trail, I have a spot finally. And it was at Cafe Ultra. At the time, I wanted to work at Floor Bar. I think I was like a little devastated that at the time. But I ended up being obsessed with Ultra. And I stayed there all the way to 2020 until the end of the pandemic. Wow. Yeah. I guess looking back on that section of your career, what made you want to go the restaurant pastry route as opposed to bakery route? I actually didn't know. I didn't know what was right for me, but I knew that I was intrigued by the restaurant experience, although I didn't really know what it was like.

9:21I knew that it was vastly different than what I had been exposed to. And I think at the time, working in, I'll say it, in that specific bakery, I think that for me it wasn't a good fit personality-wise, And I think that I was unwilling to accept that this was it, that like this is this is what cooking is like in New York. So I that's that's when I started exploring restaurants and I fell in love with it. Mostly, I think, because of like the environments that I was so lucky to be in, like Del Posto had just entered like a, you know, it was post Mario Batali era. So it was more progressive and people were thinking differently and it was led by women.

10:04And then I went on to go to, you know, work with Natasha, which was also just working with another woman. I don't know. Yeah. And also you're making to make a plated dessert as opposed to something that's designed to be taken in a bag and eaten somewhere else. Like I think there is it seems to me at least like a difference of mentality and execution that's happening there. Yeah. It's like a it's an experience. You're giving someone an experience. I mean, all food moments are experiences. But, I mean, when I think of the way I feel when I sit in a restaurant, it's special. It's sacred. This episode is brought to you by Wayfair.

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12:09only on Disney+. They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with them. This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again now streaming only on Disney+. So pandemic happens. Obviously, restaurants are not really happening. What did you do from there? Honestly, Natasha helped me get a, like she helped all of her cooks kind of find like a stepping stone just in the middle of it because none of us were employed anymore. Yeah. We all lost our jobs. You know, pastry's always the first to go and she helped me find a a gig that just kind of got me through i don't even want to say that it didn't just get me through it was it was a good job i helped develop the opening menu for fan fan donuts oh yeah which is kind of where my obsession with you know donuts started frying things i love frying things yeah i love their guava cheese donut it's delicious with like the brown butter crumble yeah so good and i feel like you maybe from there started a streak of developing opening menus it seems like it's something that's been in your wheelhouse yeah well you know what it's funny i i from there i left because i was i would i mean i was itching to be in a restaurant again um and i left and i i went from doing this donut shop to doing the reopening of Contra, which was huge at the time.

13:34Rest in peace. I mean, you know. And I did Wild Air. So simultaneously, you know, I was helping reopen Contra post-pandemic. And then I was also, Wild Air had just shifted to this new, they'd never done lunch before. They were doing lunch. They were doing pastries. There were these viral donuts happening while I was working there. The weekly like donut collab. Yeah. Bring in a different person. The donuts with friends. Donuts with friends. I never got to do a donut with friends. I got to do one. I'm so excited. What was it? Obviously, it was a cafe au lait with chicory coffee. Sounds good. Yeah.

14:14From there, I mean, I was there for like two years and then I left and went to, what did I leave to go do? Did you do Cool World after that? I did. Oh, my gosh. So funny. This is the restaurant that I never got to go to because it didn't stay open for that long. It was literally open for a year. But I left to go open that restaurant with a chef that I really wanted to work with. I really wanted to work with Quang Nguyen. He was the chef at Wild Air for five years. That's a long time. And then he left, you know, once that didn't work out, he left to go open amazing restaurants like Demo and just open Buffon.

14:54Oh. Yeah. You know, Tanya Bush, who's my friend and collaborator with Cake Scene, started talking about Cool World in a way and your pastries. And I think like— That's how we met. That's how you guys met. And that's how I first knew of you as like a person in the world and not just as someone who had like eaten your food at restaurants before. But I think like sometimes even the restaurant doesn't work out, but like maybe the ideas that happen there like continue on in another way. I will say there was something special happening in the kitchen. Totally. Like there was – we had no turnover in that kitchen.

15:27The people that we hired in the beginning were there at the end. Wow. Yeah. You know, that entire year nobody left. And where did you go after that? Once Cool World closed, I remember I was so – I was devastated. I was so depressed. I think I, you know, I started, there were other chefs who were obviously, like, it was so public. You could see, you know, you see when a restaurant closes. And I think something that I experienced was community. Like, there were other, you know, especially female chefs that were reaching out to me being like, are you okay? Like, what's going on? Yeah. What's your plan?

16:01Do you, like, do you need help? And I remember I had a good friend who I worked with at Cafe Ultra. Her name's Hannah. And she's the chef at Romans. And she had just taken that job at Romans because she was the opening chef for Jelena, which had literally burned to the ground. Oh, yeah. The New York version of Jelena. Yes. It was open for maybe a week and then burned to the ground on the street. Yes. And just around the same time that Cool World had closed. And so her and I had this moment of like. What the fuck? What's going on? And are we okay? And then she got the job at Romans, and I went and met up with her.

16:38She's like, you want to come have an espresso in the dining room? And I was like, yeah. And I went there, and I, like, cried about my life. And she was like, I was like, I don't have it in me right now to produce another menu. Like, I don't want to do it. I also, I don't want to make dessert right now. Like, I wasn't okay. And she was like, well, what if you didn't make dessert? And I was like, I don't even know what you mean. And she goes, well, she's like, what if you just took a moment to just do something different? What if you, what if you, she's like, I need a pasta cook. Bad. She's like, what if you just spent a little bit, a couple months just cranking out pastas?

17:25She's like, it's only going to make you a better chef. and I think after a lot of back and forth of me telling her that she is insane we did it and I I loved that station I loved that station so much that I didn't uh and I didn't leave for a year I stayed there and I you know that place is notoriously known for pasta like every every tables ordering one or two. So it's definitely one of the busiest stations I've ever worked. And it's super fast action, quick thinking. Some of the worst burns I've gotten in my life are on that station. But I loved it. I loved it. And I did that for a year. And I even like, like, I worked my way through every single station in that kitchen, which I'm very proud of because I'm not a savory chef, but I gained a lot of savory experience.

18:21And, you know, working with Q, like he made me do that stuff you know even if I didn't want to he was like no you have to learn how to do this wow you know whether that's like breaking down a chicken or you know roasting bones for chicken stock or you know anything um I think that's like a requirement of pastry chefs in New York City now it's like you have to be able to work a station too yeah and it's interesting not to get ahead of the long journey of your career too much but I think like pastry from my perspective has become increasingly savory in New York. And even what you're doing with the Good Morning Cafe, you have like sweet and savory on that menu.

18:58So I think it makes sense to be able to have like that full arsenal of a toolbox to draw from. Actually, yeah. And now I reflect back and I'm like, I'm so glad I did that. I'm so glad I did that. And my superpower, I laugh at it now, I can make a pasta out of anything, like in the fridge, like something like a good sauce, like that feels really good to be able to do. Is there like especially unexpected pasta sauce that you have at the top of your head or is it just anything can happen? Anything can happen, but my favorite pasta to make is vangole, linguine clam. Okay, I can't distract too much, but I had the best vangole pasta of my life when Shirley and I were in Bangkok and I have not been able to match it ever since.

19:40And I think it was just that they seasoned it like it was Thai food, like it was very spicy, but in this fruity, like perfectly balanced kind of way. But it was at a Japanese restaurant in Thailand, and it is the best vanglais I've ever had. I wonder if it's something to do with the variety of clam that it was. Probably a bunch of things. The restaurant is called Aburi Ishida. And, I mean, it's a yakitori restaurant, but the vanglais slaps. It's so good. Wow, that's so random. That's so delicious. It's so delicious. And I love, I think, to me, a through line from what you're saying so far is these kind of community relationships that you've built and these people who have pushed you to do things or like brought you on to do things.

20:18And I think that really speaks to the kind of restaurant community here in New York as well. Totally. I mean, New York is so big, but the community is very small. We all know each other, I feel like. And then the only reason I left Romans, I mean, by the time I was thinking of leaving Romans, I was working the wood fryer oven, cooking steaks and chickens and fish. So cool. So cool. The only thing I didn't do in that restaurant was Expo. I left that job only to take a job as the opening pastry chef for Kellogg's Diner. And that was such a big reopening after the pandemic, Kellogg's being this like 24-hour dining institution in Williamsburg that closed and took a long time to reopen.

20:58And I remember when it reopened, the desserts that you were doing there just seemed really fun. Like you were having a good time with the brief of doing like contemporary diner food. Yeah, it was actually at the time I remember having a thought of this is so freeing because I think I spent a lot of time in Michelin star restaurants or, you know, places where things are so focused on hyper seasonality and using high quality ingredients. And when I got to Kellogg's, they wanted the opposite of that, which somehow spoke to me. I was able to somehow start playing with things like Philadelphia cream cheese and like instant Jell-O and Keebler graham cracker crust.

21:49Like those were the things that became my normal ingredients. Yeah, I remember the Jell-O pie being kind of special. What was going on in that dish? It's a strawberry pretzel salad. The crust. Salad and like the loosest interpretation of the term. The kind of salad you really want to eat. The crust itself on the pretzel salad is just a pretzel shortbread, just butter, pulverized Snyder's of Hanover pretzels. And then we bound it together with butter and salt. And then it's truly just a no-bake cream cheese situation in the center. just tons of really good vanilla beans which i think like that's that's the part where you're like that's when you can chef it up you have moments of being like oh i have a trick that i know that is going to make this delicious whether that's like using like a high quality vanilla or understanding just how far to push the salt so when you eat it it it hits just right it's balanced totally um and then it's just topped with instant jello but it feels like it's more than the sum of the parts when you eat it together.

22:56Yeah, it's an experience. Totally. Textures. So I want to talk a little bit about the project that you've been doing for the past couple months, which is Amanda's Good Morning Cafe, which is a pop-up at Strange Delight. When did you start thinking about revisiting Louisiana-style food and cooking? Well, this actually started because of my relationship with Ham. Elway Lee, who's one of the owners. Correct. He's an owner at Strange Delight. And I actually met him. I met him at the friends and family of Kellogg's. And after he ate dessert, he came up to me and I was working the station. The station's kind of an open kitchen situation for dessert in the dining room.

23:47and he came up to me and he goes that is the best ice cream I've ever had in my entire life and I I was said I'm such I at the time he didn't know that I already knew who he was I'm sure he you know everyone knows who ham is but like I don't think he thinks that way though no he's not that guy he's not that guy but he introduced himself and so did sola and I'm like I know who you guys are. I'm obsessed with you guys. And yeah, from there, I mean, we just maintained a friendly relationship. And I had just did, I had a consultancy for this restaurant called Junior and Sons. I had just did this cake.

24:31It was like a rainbow layer cake, but it was vegan. And it was just like, there were things that were different about it than traditional rainbow cake. And he reached out and he was like, man, I have to go try that cake. And from there, I mean, I had just finished my consultancy with JR and Sun. So I actually wasn't doing anything at the time. And I just had a project that had just completely fallen through. And I was pretty devastated most of the summer. And he got wind of it. And he was just like, you're not doing anything? That's crazy. He's like, you should do a pop-up here. And the pop-up was only going to be one day.

25:09It was a Friday. And we just wanted to have fun with it. He was like, well, I'm also from Louisiana. So there's a lot of connection there because Strange Delight, Anup P. Larcetti, who is another co-owner of the restaurant Strange Delight, he's from Alexandria. He's also from Louisiana. So there's like a lot of connection and there's a lot of representation within the restaurant already that kind of just made sense. Yeah, it's like a New Orleans style oyster bar is how they bill it. Totally. And so him and I had this moment of like going back and forth of, okay, well, if we do a pop-up just one day, what do we do?

25:46What do you want to do? And I made the suggestion of setting up a mufaleta bar. Like I just wanted a bar filled with sandwiches, sliced sandwiches. And I just wanted a spread of like fun desserts. And long story short, it went really well. So well that five days later, Ham calls me and he's like, hey, everything was so good and the numbers were so good and guests were happy. He's like, what if this was a thing? What if we did a residency, like a cafe residency? And the rest is history. And that was five, four months ago? Like five months ago. Yeah. And I think there's a larger trend in New York right now where a lot of restaurants that are only open in the evening are like letting bakeries or their pop-ups use their space in the daytime.

26:34So it's part of something that I'm seeing happening elsewhere. But when this became like a more regular thing, I think everyone started talking about it. You had a couple of things on the menu that just sound and are so delicious that I think it really just kind of hit a nerve. But were you expecting that kind of response? No, I never am. But I never am. That's the answer. How did it feel for you to double down on it and decide to do something that you only thought was going to be one day for an unknown extended period of time? It's exciting, but there's also an element of fear because you have to start thinking of things beyond just what you enjoy making.

27:19There has to be a strategy to make it make sense because this space was not made to be a bakery. So how do I make it make sense? How do I make it feel cohesive? I knew I didn't want it to feel like separate from the restaurant concept itself. There were challenges that I think at the time were overpowering the excitement. But two things can be true. Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk about some of the menu items. Is there a dish or an item that you think is like the most iconic representation of the Good Morning Cafe? There are a couple. I think the honey bun. This is like a deep fried cinnamon bun.

27:58It's a deep fried cinnamon bun. There's the grits. They'll never come off the menu ever. And I think the cucumber and pimento cheese sandwich. Oh, OK. So I've not had that one yet. But I do want to talk about the grits because I love grits. I feel like they are not the easiest thing to come by in New York. And your version is just so special. Like, what are the components of making these grits really shine? Honestly, the grits themselves are just three ingredients. It's water, milk, and salt. And the grits themselves. Yeah. Where are you sourcing the grits from? Honestly, we order them from Chef's Warehouse.

28:39Okay. So it's not like some super heirloom special. Anyone could get them. But the quality of them are really good. Yeah. Yeah. And then the toppings that it comes with, you have different options. And there's like a, you call it red-eye gravy, right? It's actually a shrimp gravy. It's kind of like a shrimp etouffee-based, but just heavy on the alliums, obviously, trinity. And it's just made like a classic gravy with the roux. So it's a labor of love. Yeah. And is Grit's like a personal dish for you? Yeah. Yeah, when I was a kid, my dad on most Sundays would always take me to Waffle House and he would buy me grits.

29:22Like he wouldn't ask me what I wanted. I always, I mean, he always knew I wanted the same thing. I always wanted two over easy eggs, side of breakfast sausage, side of grits. And I would always ask my dad to dress them for me. I would ask him to fix them, which I was so young. I mean, I, you know, fixing them just meant seasoning them. Yeah. Which now as a chef I laugh at because I'm like, can you just put salt in my grits and stir them for me? But it was an act of care. And I think of that. And now when I make them, when I train someone, I describe that exact moment. Because we, you know, when we serve the grits, we serve them with a pat of butter, salt, and fresh cracked black pepper.