Pastry is layers
Rose and Rye 2022-present
This is not a revolutionary idea. In all honesty it’s probable I’m repeating it verbatim from a forgotten source. Parroting some Hollywood rant or scene from ‘Kings of Pastry.’ Maybe it’s some combination Saffitz/Pickowitz/Greenspan. A pure distillation of my food education through new media.
Pastry is layers.
Kumquat/pecan pie thanksgiving circa 2021
This is probably even common knowledge. The first rule they teach you at pastry college. It would not be unusual for me to remain obtuse to something most people understand to be assumed.
Everything I need to know about pastry is sitting in a brown box wrapped with twine on the passenger seat of my car on the way home from Granada Hills. On Vineland I contemplate tearing it open and slam dunking what’s inside down my gullet like I’m Scotty fuckin Pippen. The box’s contents- a pumpkin cream pie immaculately built. A perfect machine that kills hunger and eats better judgement.
‘It’s like poetry.’
That’s what my partner says to me as she opens the box to reveal the autumn showstopper. It glows like a sacred artifact that speaks out in ancient gourded tongues.
From heaven it might look like a pool of spiced whip. Specks of clove and cinnamon encased in a perfect shell of crusted rouge de bordeaux. Baby candied pinecones (what the fuck, pinecones?) sit atop, dusted with a brilliant gold finish. The smooth, vibrant orange custard buries a thin line of spiced pumpkin butter that tastes like a perfect fucking sunset.
Pumpkin cream pie Thanksgiving circa 2024
Sometimes, pastry is fanaticism.
When I meet Kristine and Rose we’re at an Arab owned cowboy novelty shop in Eagle Rock. It’s pop-up crazed ‘post’ covid LA as I stare down at a table organized with military grade precision. Rows of perfectly packaged cakes seem to shimmer in the sun. A swirling mass of puff pastries are assembled in the golden ratio. I’m instantly mesmerized.
Assorted nazooks R&R bakers for a free Palestine bakesale circa 2023
I sometimes wish I could go back to the moment right before the moment. The breath just before the clarity hits. Like that movie you’d unsee to see again for the first time, or that song you’d unhear to experience that euphoric novelty one more time. The equivalent of reaching through vastness of space and finally grabbing onto that thing that had been lost to you. If I could, I’d go back to the moment just before I bit into a slice of medovik out on Yosemite drive.
My sweet treat event horizon.
Right then and there, it hits me- pastry is layers.
No fucking shit. What did I think it was? It seems to slap me across my face as I look down at the stripes of barely sweet whipped sour cream spread thin over soft biscuit. Again and again. Honey wheat waves lapping on my shores. A soft whisper of bliss reverberating in my jaw.
The sweat treat event horizon in question (medovik slice)
Years later Kristine buys me a bagel and tells me about stirring vats of choux at an old gig she had as a pastry cook in a french bakery. She spent her days schlepping bags of flour down a sketchy crooked stairwell, churning out financiers. Doing what sounded like too much work for too little pay.
She tells me a bit about nazooks and the Soviet era recipes that inspired the culinary intention behind Rose and Rye. She touches on a rich identity of a people who’s history constantly seems to be reimagined by bad actors, and tries to articulate the psychology of this particularly palimpsested foodscape.
While I’m not well versed in Armenian food culture, but it’s pretty clear what it’s not- easily defineable. Los Angeles is just a microcosm of the diaspora and some 200 thousand Armenians live in the county. Rose and Rye operates as a kind of continuation, reinvention, iconoclasm of the Armenian palate.
Yes, candied citrus and pistachio are important tools in their arsenal that speak to classic middle eastern/levant flavor profiles, and their ‘simpler’ honey/sour cream utilizations uphold a tradition of Russian immigrant food, but in classic LA fashion they are just as likely to hit you with a perfect matcha/strawberry moment.
Choc-hazelnut nazook and black sesame-matcha nazook circa 2021
‘What am I going to say about croissants that hasn’t already been said?’ Kristine says bluntly as we people watch on a bench in Larchmont Village.
A line of customers snakes outside a bicoastal cookie emporium that seems to have found a winning blueprint: drop cookies the size of softballs that get snatched up by the dozens. A dry, overly sweet, evolutionary mutation created in the lab of late era capitalism.
Kristine shrugs as we peak into the front window, unbothered.
‘People seem to like them.’
No doubt that when you’re stoned and hungry in LA any snack could be the best snack you’ve ever had. A little fix to appease the growing void in your pleasure cortex. Any snack could be that snack, but on some statistical plane there is one snack that actually is. That snack is Rose and Rye’s vanilla nazook.
Just thinking about it sets off fireworks in my brain. A vanilla nazook reheating in my toaster oven has fragrance like church bells. I’ll risk third degree burns just to inhale the scorching pastry in one breath. To call it simple would be a disservice. It’s precise. It’s sophisticated. A monument to detail. An ode to layers.
For Angelenos curious in procuring some of the finest pies in the game Rose and Rye will be running Thanksgiving specials this year, follow @roseandrye on instagram for updates about preorders and future pop-ups! *This is not a paid advertisement, I’m literally just obsessed with Rose and Rye!!!