Exacting evolution

Tim Brennan opened Cravings 25 years ago and has been comfortably ensconced in his Webster Groves location for the past 15. Brennan, of course, is known for baking classic, high-quality pastries. “I’m the old kid on the block, literally and figuratively. Twenty-five years of making pastry … there are people I’ve trained who are now competitors,” said Brennan. “Initially that worried me. Now it’s a form of compliment because … if they learned confidence and skill under my tutelage, great. That’s the best thing.” But he’s not resting on his laurels – he never has: Six months after opening in Webster Groves, Brennan expanded the business to include a full-service restaurant that serves lunch during the week and dinner on weekends. He recently brought in a new chef, Jason Henry, to re-envision Cravings’ savory menu. How have you seen pastry change? I grew up in St. Louis and corner bakeries were everywhere. I was the kid who made my mother go to four different bakeries to buy four types of doughnuts. She’d come home from a convention and bring these very fancy petit fours home. I would sit at the kitchen table and critique them with her. In those days women took great pride in baking skills, so three to five women would make a dessert for each monthly Women’s Auxiliary meeting. My mom would bring them home. … And if one of the desserts was especially good, I would needle my mom to get the recipe. What intrigues you about pastry? It’s a very precise form of food. There’s exactitude that’s required. Just today, 25 years into it, carrot cake [layers] came out of the oven: Why does one look a different color? Why is the texture different? I had to deconstruct; [turns out] the leavening component, the baking soda, was omitted from one. So what we’re trying to do … is to turn that carrot cake into biscotti. So it’s kind of like, the mother of invention … Absolutely. How do I salvage that? The European model is that everything is of value. I try to embody that in what I do. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to sell something inferior. Quite the contrary. If I know something isn’t what it’s supposed to be, what can I do to make something new out of this altered item? It’s as simple and as complicated as that. So how do you continue to learn? I travel a whole lot. If I try something and really love it, I take very thorough notes, then I come back to my own kitchen and try to re-create it, translate it. Finding your voice in what you do is what’s really important. I apply that principle to food. If I’m in Thailand and I taste this magnificent crab claw and a yellow curry with some coconut milk, I want to re-create that in my own kitchen, knowing that the crab may not be the same, the curry may never be the same. Therein lies the challenge. Being different for the sake of being different doesn’t satisfy me. I don’t think that it satisfies customers either. If something doesn’t taste good, it doesn’t matter how creative it is. And quite frankly, I’ve been to a lot of places where different is what sets them apart, but [it’s] not necessarily good. I don’t mean to be hypercritical, but what I know from running a business this long is that about 90 percent of it goes in the garbage because it never gets to the level that it needs to be. How are you implementing changes to your savory menu? Jason [Henry] came in guns ablaze. Change everything! Jason worked his way up through the ranks at Savor. Greatly impassioned with food and, I’m finding, really, really talented. We had a big powwow a week, 10 days into his job here. And I said, “Jason, we have a really loyal repeat customer base. There are some customers who eat exactly the same item every time they come in, and they come in once a week.” You can’t alienate those people. Exactly, because it takes years to build that loyalty. But how do we spin on them? If we’ve had curry chicken salad on the menu for seven years, most of the people will want chicken salad in some form, so why don’t we do 20, 30 variations. Let curry be among the mix. We could possibly woo some of those chicken salad loyalists over to a new type. What are some new items? Short ribs. Now, I know everybody in town is doing them, but the sauces that Jason does with them are so magnificent. Layers of complexity. And then variations on a theme. So maybe Burgundy mushrooms are served with the short ribs. Maybe he’s doing polenta. Maybe whatever vegetables that are good at the farmers’ market. How do you feel about food trends? I don’t follow every trend out there. I’m very confident in the voice that I’ve established and the food that I create. Everywhere I go, if food tastes good, I don’t care what cuisine it is. I think that comes back through my filter and through the filter of St. Louis. How do I do a more down-home, homespun, direct taste. Simplicity. What is the focus of your pastry? For me the greatest dessert embodies a range of textures. There should be crunch or crispness. There should be something creamy or smooth. If there’s something like caramel in it that pulls and has chewiness, I’m in heaven. If it combines all of those … in fact, I’ll bring out a cookie for you. It’s crisp, sandwiched with a chewy caramel and then a chocolate that hardens on the outside, but if you allow it to come to room temperature, then it’s creamy and smooth. And then a little bit of sea salt and some crunchy toasted nuts. There are levels. Initially you might taste one thing on one part of your mouth. You get a texture in another section. Food should have complexity. It becomes simple only if you work really hard at it.