This week, we’re looking at ingenuity. The restaurant world has received a jolt of it in 2020. And while much of it wasn’t voluntary, it’s transformed the landscape. Let’s take a look at how that’s played out in Boston.
Joanne Chang Opens Another Flour Bakery, And Becomes A Social Media Star
Even before I set foot in a Flour Bakery + Cafe, I knew who Joanne Chang was. She beat Bobby Flay in a celebrated showdown on the Food Network, and was a multiple James Beard Award nominee in the pastry and chef categories.
In 2016, the year I got to Boston, Joanne won the Beard Award as Outstanding Baker. It seemed that as soon as I found one of her Flour Bakeries, she was opening more — two that year alone across the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass.
I signed up for her class in the Science of Baking, checked out her cookbooks, and I was delighted when the Boston Center For Adult Education asked me to moderate a panel with Joanne and Dorie Greenspan.
I discovered Myers + Chang, her sit down restaurant with food inspired by her family’s Taiwanese recipes. All in all, it seemed like Joanne had the perfect mix.
As it turned out, Joanne was just getting going. While 2020 has been a challenge for many people, it has been a stellar year for her.
The latest Flour blooms on Beacon Hill
Any time a Flour opens, it’s an event, as you can see from the photo I took when one of her Cambridge shops opened.
This month, Joanne opened her ninth Flour Bakery + Cafe on Beacon Hill, not far from Massachusetts General Hospital. If you walk north on Charles Street, past quaint shops and historic homes, and make a right turn headed east, you can’t miss it.
The Beacon Hill location was supposed to open in the spring, following the process that Joanne outlined for me in this Forbes story.
But like so much this year, the build out got delayed by the pandemic. In fact, her cafes were closed completely for about a month.
While construction was underway, Joanne created a sideline for herself: video star.
For the past few months, Joanne has been conducting weekly Instagram Bake Alongs with live broadcasts on Sunday nights at 7 pm ET. They were born of a realization that customers’ view of the culinary world had changed.
“When we slowly started to reopen we recognized that not everyone was comfortable going outside and visiting the bakery or the restaurant,” she says. “We also knew that people were stuck at home and bored as well as needing some joy and distraction.”
Teaching recipes and selling kits
The Flour team decided to teach one recipe each week from her book Pastry Love via Instagram, and call the series #FlourLove. You can hear a clip from it on the latest episode of the CulinaryWoman podcast.
They created baking kits, available from the Flour website, so that people could join in from home. Prices range from about $20 to $26.
“The whole idea is that people would bake at home and share their pastries by tagging me and Flour and #flourlove and everyone could see what others were making,” she says.
On the live broadcasts, she spends about 30 minutes doing a demonstration that relates to the recipe. She share what other bakers have done with the recipe, visible from their Instagram posts, and answering questions.
“We had no idea if the idea would take and we were floored with the response! Hundreds of people joined the first bake-along and it has taken off,” Joanne says.
She’s now up to her 18th session, which tonight features a tour of Flour’s production kitchen. The goodies in the programs have included her famous sticky buns, raspberry pop-tarts, croissants and apple vanilla pound cake, which explains the photo above.
Participation ranges from a few hundred people to more than a thousand. She estimates that about 25 percent of her viewers are purchasing the kits and the rest are assembling the ingredients themselves, or just watching.
“What we've realized is that some kits are great for team bake-alongs,” she says. “Companies and families and groups will order multiple kits, and everyone bakes together. It's super fun.”
Joanne admits the first few attempts were “a little choppy and awkward. But as we've done more and more, I've gotten more comfortable.”
What happens down the road
One unanswered question is whether food figures will discontinue their online efforts once the world gets back to normal, and diners are willing to return to restaurants and bars without a second thought.
That’s a long way off, however. In the meantime, Joanne says she’d love to keep her Instagram series going.
“I do love doing these so I think we will continue!” she says. “I like this format because it's easier to reach more people...who can then bake more delightful pastries and spread more pastry love!”
Follow @flourbakeryandcafe on Instagram to see Joanne’s latest recipe and schedule.
Remembering My First CulinaryWoman
Lots of people credit their grandmothers for teaching them to cook. I didn’t grow up knowing either of mine. But I learned plenty from the original CulinaryWoman in my life: my mother, Bonny Maynard.
Next Saturday marks the fifth anniversary of her death at age 102, and while it’s always a melancholy day, it’s a happy one, too. We call it “Bonny Day” and I try to think of the wonderful impact that she had on my life.
Along with sharing her love of books and languages, my mother taught me how to cook some family favorites. The first thing she trusted me with was apple crisp. I was allowed to peel and chop the apples into a pink melamine bowl that I still have, while she assembled the crunchy oatmeal topping.
Another one of her specialties was spaghetti sauce, often made with tomatoes that she canned in the fall. “Bring up two jars from the cellar,” she would instruct me.
There is no recipe for her sauce; it is made from layers of ingredients. First, sweat chopped onion (don’t fry it), then add crumbled meat, and tomato paste, and let that cook. Then come the tomatoes and herbs, and let the pot simmer. Three hours is ideal, stirred every 30 minutes. Salt it only at the very end. (You can make it vegetarian by skipping the meat, but the onion plus tomato paste step is vital.)
My mother learned to prepare the New England specialties that my father loved, like various roasts and mashed potatoes, but she also fixed a number of Baltic dishes that she learned from her mother.
I never really appreciated them when I was growing up, but now I’m glad to have been exposed to them, like the mazurek that she made each Easter.
My mother also loved to dine out, and we had all kinds of restaurant adventures, from Chicago to Washington D.C., New York to London and especially Paris.
We each took our first trips to Paris separately - I went on my own at age 16, she went with a group from the Ann Arbor Women’s City Club. With sight seeing out of the way, we could simply explore and shop and eat. And on one trip, we had an especially memorable meal.
Back in late 20th century, before you could book a reservation on your phone, you had to send a fax to obtain a table. On a trip not long after I graduated from college, my mother wanted to eat at La Tour D’Argent, which at the time held three Michelin stars.
I was skeptical that we’d be able to get in. But, I dutifully wrote weeks in advance, and to my surprise, received a confirmation in return.
On the appointed evening, we took a taxi to the Left Bank and rode the small elevator to the dining room. We entered to find that we were the only table of two women. Every other table was filled with business men, or prosperous looking couples. We were seated at an all-right table, off to the side, but with a somewhat obscured view out the plate glass windows.
Suddenly, the maitre d’ appeared, and swept us off to one of the finest tables in the restaurant, directly overlooking the Seine River below and Notre Dame Cathedral across the way.
It certainly wasn’t my youthful gawkiness that impressed him. No, he had clearly taken a shine to my mother, who was clad in an elegant St. John Knit black dress, pearls around her neck, diamonds glittering in her ears.
He chose to treat us like royalty, much to puzzled glances from the people around us, and from then on, our service was exquisite.
We had one of the most memorable meals of my life, starting with a paper thin carpaccio appetizer, then a main course of five types of fish, each prepared a different way, and ending with a deep rich chocolate torte with mint ice cream.
I ordered a half bottle of crisp Sancerre to accompany it, and the wine steward seemed pleased with my choice, which was based solely on the expertise I’d accumulated in my Les Amies du Vin tasting classes.
As the meal was concluding, our friend the maitre d’ returned to ask if we enjoyed it. My mother put her hand on her heart, looked up at him, and said, “I die happy.” “Oh, no, Madame!” he exclaimed.
Of course she was joking. My mother kept traveling into her late 90s. When a friend asked, “Where did you go on your last trip?” she replied, “I haven’t taken it yet.” Even when she was home during her final months, she talked about getting back to Paris. If I’d had access to a private jet, I would have gotten her there. But Paris was the subject of the last book she took with her to hospice. It was called The Little Paris Book Shop.
Thank you, Mummy. Thinking of you, on Bonny Day, and always.
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