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Ebow Dadzie '03 Named 2007 Pastry Chef of the Year
Photo credit: L. Sylvers '06A tip of the toque to alumnus Ebow Dadzie (’03) who is rapidly becoming one of the most accomplished pastry chefs to come out of the Borough of Brooklyn.
Named 2007 Pastry Chef of the Year at the prestigious 18th Annual U.S. Pastry Competition sponsored by Paris Gourmet, Dadzie dons his toque (tall white chef's hat) as a pastry chef at The Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. He is also owner of a catering company, Everlasting Impressions, and co-owner of Folukie Restaurant in Bedford Stuyvesant, a family venue that opened last November and is named after his aunt. “Folukie" in Yoruba means "In God’s hands."
In the pastry competition, held at the Javits Center in Manhattan, Dadzie beat out leading chefs from all over the world with his interpretation of the “Rainforest” theme. He created a tableau of Disneyesque flora and fauna, including a four-foot-tall tropical tree delicately carved and decorated with vines, roots, moss, ladybugs, dragonflies, butterflies, a worm, a leopard, a toucan and an iguana. The vividly colored showpiece was made from 70 pounds of Cocoa Noel chocolate. The cake, voted Best in Show, consisted of layers of vanilla mousse, bitter chocolate mousse, raspberry passion fruit gelée, almond sables, raspberry caramel glaze and lemon-vanilla macaroons.
The 25-year-old chef, who lives in Bensonhurst, applied not only his imagination and boundless energy to this confection, but also ideas from a visit to his father’s homeland. “I traveled to Ghana just to go to the rainforest for inspiration,” says Dadzie, who is half Ghanaian and half-Trinidadian. Such research isn’t unusual for him. City Tech pastry arts professor Louise Hoffman encouraged this approach by taking Dadzie's class to the Museum of Modern Art to look at paintings for a few hours. “It makes me see things,” he says. “If I can see it in my mind, I can physically make it happen.”
Creating edible art under competition pressure always has an element of surprise, often unpleasant. During the recent competition, the top of Dadzie's tree started to fall down, some leaves broke, then a bird’s wing -- and then the microwave oven. “Everything that could go wrong, went wrong,” Dadzie laughs, recalling the chaos. “But every time there was a problem, I figured it out.”
Dadzie’s winning streak includes a 2006 Guinness World Record (shared with competition partner Regis Courivaud, owner/chef of Le Monde and Deluxe) for building the world's tallest sugar skyscraper -- a 17.5-foot-high replica of the Empire State Building, which won The Food Network’s “World’s Largest Sugar Showpiece Challenge." Also that year, at the 138th Annual Salon of Culinary Art, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Société Culinaire Philanthropique and third-place honors at the 17th Annual U.S. Pastry Competition, which clearly motivated him to go for this year’s gold.
Though he began baking at age eight with his mother and maternal grandmother, who taught him to make black rum cakes and sweet breads, Dadzie didn’t think of pastry as a career. “I was into computers,” he says. While attending South Shore High School's Travel and Tourism program, he interned at a Manhattan hotel, where he realized he didn’t like sitting at a computer all day doing paperwork. As a state track and field champion, Dadzie was courted by colleges for his running ability, and also enjoyed studying and producing art. “I didn’t have a clear focus,” he admits.
With both his mother and father holding degrees from City Tech, Dadzie decided to enroll, and he was quickly able to bring the worlds of art and confectionary together. The SEEK program helped him with math for his hospitality accounting studies, and tutors also provided support. He traveled in Spain, England and France, spent three months studying in Castera Verduzan in southwest France, and interned at Restaurant Le Florida in France’s Gascogne region. In 2003, he was one of three City Tech recipients of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce's Brooklyn Eats Scholarship.
After graduation, Dadzie became assistant pastry chef to the late Craig Rutman (then a City Tech adjunct professor) at a Brooklyn restaurant and a pastry arts instructor with the Adult Education Program in his former high school. He then landed his present job at The Grand Hyatt Hotel, where he prepares desserts and showpieces for banquets and other functions.
Dadzie's friends from City Tech have become colleagues and collaborators. Several years ago, alumnus Anthony Smith '96 invited him to prepare seven desserts and a chocolate showpiece for a seven-course dinner given by talk show host Tavis Smiley in Beverly Hills. Alumna L. Sylvers '06 created his website <www.ebowdadzie.com>. Thalia Warner ’02, is a partner in Dadzie's catering company.
Currently, Dadzie, a member of the prestigious Société Culinaire Philanthropique, the oldest association of chefs in the United States, has his fingers in many pies, so to speak. For Everlasting Impressions, he creates special occasion cakes using artistic techniques so adroit that his wedding cakes could be mistaken for satin pillows trimmed with cascading flower garlands. His family-owned Folukie Restaurant serves Senegalese, West Indian, French and American specialties, including pelau (Trinidad’s national dish of pigeon peas, rice and chicken), banana bread pudding and exotic beverages such as sorrel, mauby, peanut punch, sea moss and soursop punch.
“The dessert menu is about to become a little more exotic,” he says mischievously. “My favorite ice cream is avocado. I do a lot of weird things, so it’s good if you have an open mind: red pepper sorbet, cayenne pepper in black chocolate cake -- nice.” Dadzie is also considering his uncle’s offer to back him in opening a confectionary school in Ghana, one of the world’s largest producers of chocolate. That country has “no one who’s making desserts like this and showing what you can do with chocolate,” Dadzie says. ”I would like to open a school there introducing confectionary art.”
Dadzie, originally from Flatbush, Brooklyn, relishes continuing to compete as well. He is in the process of making sketches “because I will be doing the French competition again in November.” He is captain of Team Dadzie, which will compete for the national pastry team championship in 2009. And, he will return to his alma mater, City Tech, to give a workshop on chocolate on November 15.
His recipe for success? He practices the four D's he learned from his track coach, Phil Zodda -- Dedication, Determination, Desire and Discipline. “And for what I do, you also must have great patience,” he explains. “You have to love it. There's stress, but I get a real rush from it. I’m making it my business to be the best.”
10/4/07
