4 days ago
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- San Francisco Chronicle
Dessert made with chicken? This S.F. pastry chef works wonders with unconventional ingredients
My first introduction to the chef Deirdre Balao Rieutort-Louis was a scallop. Served in its shell set over a bed of ice and kelp, it was hard-seared to a mahogany brown. My spoon sliced through it as if it were custard, which makes sense, because it was. This was dessert.
Rieutort-Louis was the pastry chef at Aphotic until its closure at the end of last year. In his review of the restaurant, which served seafood as part of every course, my colleague Cesar Hernandez wrote gleefully about her oyster ice cream, 'served on a half shell with tart mignonette foam,' as well as her uni ice cream, also served in its spiny endoskeleton.
The scallop dish I had, a squidgy cylinder of pudding with a crackly brûléed crust, tasted of coconut, vanilla and, ever so faintly, scallop. You'll have to take my word for it, but it worked.
There was a lot of talent in the kitchen at Aphotic, a Michelin-starred, white tablecloth restaurant full of theatricality, and it's been interesting to see where alums have landed. Parker Brown, the chef de cuisine, recently opened Side A in the old Universal Cafe space. (If you're wondering if it's fine dining, he serves something called a 'garbage salad.') And in March, Rieutort-Louis began her new job at Dalida.
Like Ernest, which I reviewed last week, Dalida was a restaurant many readers felt deserved a spot on our Top 100 Restaurants list. Cesar wrote a warm review of the Mediterranean restaurant in 2023, which at the time didn't have a pastry chef. When I visited last year, both desserts that I tried were puddings — one rice, finished under the broiler and topped with caramel, the other a chocolate muhallebi with a swirl of Turkish coffee cream. I enjoyed them both, but they were clearly the types of lower-lift, make-ahead desserts that could be sauced to order and sent out.
When chef-owners Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz first approached Rieutort-Louis about taking over pastry at Dalida, they thought it was a long shot. They were friends with her from culinary school, but Rieutort-Louis' path had taken her firmly in the direction of fine dining. To their great surprise, she said yes, and her presence in the kitchen is a game changer.
Desserts are now an order of magnitude more complex and composed, with multiple elements on the plate. A tribute to vişneli ekmek tatlısı, a Turkish dessert of bread soaked in sour cherry syrup, features a layer of white chocolate anise cream sandwiched between the two magenta milk bread layers, a caramelized almond and amaretto ice cream, and a shard of anise meringue set over the top at a jaunty angle, like a hat at a royal wedding. There are edible flowers.
My immediate thought when I read the description for the tavuk göğsü — a 'chicken and milk pudding' — was that Rieutort-Louis was once again dreaming up desserts featuring ingredients that should reasonably not be on the dessert menu. But tavuk göğsü, our server explained, is a traditional Ottoman delicacy, with boiled and pulverized chicken breast acting as a thickener in much the way that gelatin might. (This was a particular win for my dining companion, Zaynab Issa, as the dish was halal.) It was both a triumph and like nothing I've ever had before. The silky pudding, set into a thin sheet, rolled into a cylinder and brûleed, dissolved on the tongue, leaving behind the taste of cinnamon, not chicken. Paired with a strawberry-lemon sorbet and a neat pile of strawberries, it is a bewitching dessert, whether you're a Protein Bro or not.
That's not to say Rieutort-Louis isn't up to her old tricks. When I visited in April, she told me she was working on a tzatziki ice cream, and I see there's a cantaloupe granita with feta and dill as well. If I didn't know who was in the kitchen, I'd be worried, but Rieutort-Louis can feed me whatever madness she wants.
