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One of Nora Antene's final desserts at Le Pigeon: A strawberry and rose Good Humor bar. The pastry chef will take her talents to the upcoming Tusk this year.
(Michael Russell, The Oregonian)
On a warm evening in early May, Nora Antene crouched over a loaded counter, squirting carrot frosting from a pastry bag over 33 small rectangles of golden beet cake. It was the last night of LaMama, a series of pop-up dinners led by chef Sam Smith as a warm-up for his soon-to-open restaurant Tusk, and Antene was plating the last course.
Tusk, the first project from Ava Gene's chef Joshua McFadden's Submarine Hospitality group, is eagerly anticipated by those who follow Portland's restaurant scene. Smith and chef de cuisine Wesley Johnson were on the opening crew for Zahav, Michael Solomonov's influential Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia.
Their experience shows in the Middle-East-meets-Northwest dishes Smith has tried out at LaMama. But diners should be just as excited by the involvement of Antene, who in just over five years in Portland has become one of the city's finest pastry chefs.
At Le Pigeon, where she has worked for the past two years, Antene crafts playful reinterpretations of nostalgic classics like Whoopie Pies and Good Humor bars with unexpected twists -- sunchoke ice cream, romesco sauce, candied red pepper -- on plates dappled with leaves, berries and flower petals.
Antene is modest about her work. "I think at heart I'm sort of a home baker. Nothing I make in the restaurant is something people couldn't make at home," she says. "I don't use any kind of magical techniques or equipment." Her most high-tech tools are a stand mixer and an ice cream machine.
She credits her approachable but exacting style -- "done well, but nothing too weird," she calls it -- to her lack of formal training in pastry. Originally from Chicago, Antene studied French at the University of Wisconsin, but found her interest drifting toward the kitchen.
"In my junior year I realized I was spending all my time cooking and not studying," she says.
After an internship at Madison's L'Etoile, a year of culinary school and a stint teaching cooking classes children, she got a pastry line position at the Chicago restaurant MK. "There were prep cooks who came in and made everything, and I just put it on plates," she says.
A year later, in 2010, she moved to Portland with a friend and landed a job as assistant to Lauren Fortgang, the pastry chef at the just-opened Little Bird.
"She became a crucial part of the restaurant right from the start," Fortgang says. "It's rare to find a chef, pastry or savory, who has an innate talent for both the visual and flavor aspects of food."
When Fortgang took a break from Little Bird after having a child, Antene took over as pastry chef. Later, she jumped to Little Bird's sister restaurant Le Pigeon.
Le Pigeon chef Gabe Rucker says, "Normally I'm the one who comes to people with flavor combinations where they look at me like I'm stupid, and then it works really well. She's the person that does that to me. She's absolutely trustworthy."
Nora Antene's final dessert for Le PIgeon: A pistachio-mint Whoopie Pie.
Last summer, Smith told Antene about his vision for a vegetable-driven Middle Eastern restaurant. She was intrigued. "I like working with other people's styles and molding my style to match theirs," she says. She brought the idea up with Rucker, who suggested she join the project.
Antene and Smith both expect Tusk to showcase collaboration. Antene will oversee pastry and baking, including the restaurant's whole grain flatbread, but each of the three lead chefs will contribute to the entire menu.
"With Nora's creativity, and the way she approaches dishes and ingredients, I really don't want to limit her talent," Smith says.
While the menu is still in flux, some ideas in play are parsley and mint granita layered with hibiscus soft-serve and topped with strawberries and rose-syrup; rotating vegetable cakes featuring celery root, parsnip, beets and carrots; and sweet sunchoke custard.
"Tusk is a very vegetable-focused restaurant. I wanted to carry that into the dessert menu by having elements of vegetables," Antene says. "Root vegetables translate the most easily, but I'm hoping for summer to do things with cucumbers that will be really refreshing and light."
A hint of that focus was on display at the LaMama dinner in May. After frosting her dozens of golden beet-cake rectangles, Antene dusted each with crumbled halva -- candy made from ground sesame -- and sprinkled on marigold leaves and petals. The result looked like the aftermath of a windy spring day, messy in a beautiful way, and tasted mildly sweet and earthy, with hints of lemon and cotton candy. Done well, but nothing too weird.
-- Ben Waterhouse