Are Pastry Chefs An Endangered Species?

Most pastry kitchens are tiny. A convection oven; a proofing rack; a giant Hobart mixer, looking like a squat, gunmetal-gray R2-D2; a long prep table (in marble for chocolate, if you're lucky) for tarts or laminated dough or maybe a few plated desserts; more speed racks, stacked high to make the most of any available space. Instead of imagining a French patisserie, think Das Boot. And that's if there's a pastry kitchen at all. Often there isn't: The space in any restaurant kitchen is at such a premium that the tables and ovens tend to be taken by the savory chefs.

And if the world of pastry chefs has long been a small one, it has gotten even smaller since 2008, when the economic downturn translated into a disproportionate number of them losing their jobs.

"The financial crisis was devastating to pastry," pastry chef Roxana Jullapat tells me on a recent morning after breakfast service at Cooks County, the Mid-City restaurant she co-owns with her husband, chef Daniel Mattern.

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