The dessert course, hired separately
The Pâtissier on Call
The specialist who arrives for the last forty minutes: a plated dessert, a cake that photographs, a dessert table, petits fours with the coffee.
Skills
What the job actually demands
- Plating a dessert for twenty in eight minutes
- Tempering chocolate in a warm house
- Building a cake that survives four hours in shade
- Pastry at altitude or in tropical humidity
Watch out
The warning sign
Savoury chefs who treat dessert as the fourth course they also do. Dessert is a different trade and a mediocre finish is the most remembered failure of the evening.
Trial
How to audition one
Order one cake or one dessert for a small dinner first. Pastry is the easiest discipline to audit in advance.
Ask these five questions
Before you book
- What dessert holds for twenty minutes if the table runs late?
- How do you handle tempering in a warm kitchen?
- What fridge space do you need, and when?
- Can the cake stand outdoors in shade for three hours?
- Do petits fours come with the coffee or with the dessert?
Questions hosts ask
Is a separate pastry chef really worth it?
Above twelve guests, almost always. It is the cheapest way to raise the course guests remember most.
What about ice cream in a rented house?
Assume the freezer is inadequate. Either the chef brings a cold box with dry ice or you choose a set cream, a tart or a semifreddo instead.
Formats
Where this profile fits
Format
One hundred guests, one kitchen tentWedding Banquet
Sixty to two hundred seated, a field kitchen, a timetable nobody may move and a cake that has to survive the afternoon.
Read on
Format
Restaurant precision, private roomTasting Menu for Eight
Eight to nine courses, a brigade of three, wine paired by the glass.
Read on
Format
Formal service, domestic buildingTownhouse Banquet
Twenty to forty guests, silver service or plated, in a building never designed for it.
Read onMenus
What they cook
Menu
Twelve sweet things, standingThe Dessert Table
For weddings and big receptions: a table of small sweet things instead of a plated dessert, built to survive three hours and look untouched for the first twenty minutes..
Read on
Menu
Three cheeses, not thirtyThe Cheese Finale
The course that costs almost nothing to get right and is almost always got wrong: three cheeses at perfect ripeness, bread, one sweet element and a wine that suits them..
Read on
Menu
The full eveningThe Eight Course Tasting Dinner
The classical arc: three small bites, a raw course, a soup, a fish, a meat, a cheese moment, a pre dessert and a dessert.
Read onMarkets
Where to find them
Market
Where catering is a trade with its own wordParis
France gave the trade its vocabulary, and the Parisian traiteur still behaves like a restaurant that happens to travel.
Read on
Market
Townhouses, mews kitchens and a trade that never sleepsLondon
No city hires out a kitchen brigade faster.
Read on
Market
Six flights of stairs, one service lift and the best brigades in AmericaNew York
New York has the deepest American talent pool and the hardest buildings.
Read on