You probably have ever waited in line for bomboloni on the Ferry Constructing on a Saturday morning or recall the massive pecan butter and whisky scones that Absinthe used to sling again within the day, you’ve already been acquainted with the work of Luis Villavelazquez. He’s not a family title, however during the last 11 years, the pastry chef has grown to turn into one in all San Francisco’s most versatile and inventive dessert ghostwriters.
Now, after 18 years within the restaurant enterprise, Villavelazquez is lastly able to step out of the shadows: He’s opening his personal store within the Tenderloin, with plans for a dessert tasting menu and pop-ups. Known as Les Éléments, the brand new area may also be house to experiments from his long-running pastry consulting enterprise and wholesale operation.
He’s presently producing work for his personal shoppers, however as soon as he will get ultimate approval from the well being division, the general public can are available for pastries, à la carte service and dessert tastings on evenings from Thursday via Saturday.
That three-course dessert tasting menu ($32), a singular providing in a metropolis the place savory tasting menus dominate, would be the star of the present. It’ll spotlight Villavelazquez’s dessert philosophy: learning outdated strategies and recipes and reworking them into trendy creations.
“I’ve all the time considered my ability set as cultural anthropology,” stated Villavelazquez.
Take, as an example, his tres leches cake. Within the U.S., bakeries have a tendency to make use of cow’s milk. As an alternative, Villavelazquez has opted for goat’s milk, the standard ingredient utilized in Mexico. He got here up with the concept to infuse a candy tea taste into the milk with the usage of chamomile and honey, and layers the cake with small cubes of roasted peaches to steadiness its mild and candy flavors with the earthy funk of the goat’s milk.
Different tasting menu objects embrace a bread pudding, the place bread is changed with bomboloni and cake. He tops off the creation with a brown butter sauce and a beneficiant shaving of black truffle. One other dessert was impressed by the melon puddings and truffles Villavelazquez sampled in Tokyo on a visit just a few years in the past. At Les Components, that has became a parfait with layers of melon cake, melon mousse, recent melon and shards of sweet he calls “melon glass.”
The dessert spot has an in depth a la carte menu as effectively, with objects like a vegan chocolate chip cookie made with Valrhona chocolate, a cheesecake made with sweet cap mushrooms, which impart a maple taste, and meringue tarts that includes lemon and blackberry. A few of the tasting menu desserts may also be served up as bigger variations that feed as much as 4 individuals.
Opening Les Components is a giant transfer for Villavelazquez, an trade veteran who’s labored as a pastry chef for practically 20 years. Till now, although, he’s largely labored for others within the trade. He’s had previous pastry chef stints at Elizabeth Falkner’s acclaimed institutions Citizen Cake and Orson, and he’s revamped dessert menus at Japanese restaurant Ozumo and now-shuttered French gem La Folie, amongst others. Since 2010, he’s taught on the Metropolis of Faculty of San Francisco’s Culinary Arts and Hospitality Research Division, the place he graduated from in 2004. His college students, in flip, have gone on to work at high S.F. eating places like Mister Jiu’s, Spruce and Tartine Manufactory.
A lot of that have can be on show at Les Éléments, typically within the type of desserts just like the Midnight Chocolate, a satan’s meals cake creation with whipped chocolate ganache that was impressed by his time at Orson. And at different occasions by the mentoring he continues to supply.
“He’s very meticulous and progressive,” stated Sarah Watson, a pastry chef who not too long ago moved from rural Washington to help Villavelazquez, who she’s recognized for seven years, as a prepare dinner. “I nearly really feel like I’m going to high school another time.”
Other than the three days every week that Les Éléments can be open to the general public, Villavelazquez plans to host pop-up collaborations with each native and worldwide cooks and plans to have common trade meet-ups of native pastry cooks to construct a group.
Although his area is new, Villavelazquez is already eager about enlargement plans. He’s eyeing different small areas within the quick space; finally, he desires to have a number of areas that join to one another philosophically and supply “a associated expertise the place you possibly can simply do one, two and three,” he defined. One such further area, for instance, may give attention to espresso.
“I need to poke at my counterparts, my savory mates who’ve all the time doubted that pastry cooks can have a worthwhile operation,” he stated.
Opening quickly. Les Éléments, 442 Hyde Road, (415) 741-8666, leselementssf.com
Tamara Palmer is a contract author, skilled DJ and writer of California Consuming, an internet site and occasional print zine. E-mail: food@sfchronicle.com