Lutèce’s Legendary Pastry Program Has a New Chef at Its Helm | Eater DC
"A five-year-old Neo-bistro where Ana Sofía Pino has moved from pastry sous chef to head pastry chef after joining on the Saturday after Valentine’s Day last year; that first weekend coincided with the formal opening of the Popal Group’s Mexico City–influenced restaurant across town and prompted an immediate, fast-paced start—Pino recalls, “That week is a big week in the industry. I think it was the right way to start. We just hit the ground running.” A Silver Spring, Maryland native, Pino combines traditional French pastry training at the Culinary Institute of America with nearly a decade making sweets across D.C. and Baltimore (including NoHo Hospitality Group’s Rye Street Tavern and Alfred Restaurant Group’s Duck Duck Goose), and has been building the famously intricate desserts in the Neo-bistro’s basement kitchen alongside chef pâtissier de partie Savannah Velasco-Kent. Head chef Isabel Coss praises her, saying Pino “took on a big job with such grace and such professionalism,” and emphasizes the collaborative ethos that guides the pastry team: Coss has encouraged them to “show me what you can do” and to rely on the power of “ping-ponging” ideas off each other, while stressing that “you need such a good team behind you and your team needs to grow with you.” Pino says of working under Coss, “Honestly, I think Isabel reminded me to have fun in the kitchen again. I think it’s very easy to, like, put that to the side, or sometimes things become a little monotone.” Velasco-Kent celebrates the “intimate teamwork” behind every seasonal dish and describes fleeting, produce-driven desserts like those made with figs, blood orange, and perfectly ripe strawberries as creatively fulfilling “flings.” The pastry program sticks to a modern adaptation of French pastries but with distinct personal flourishes: Pino is obsessed with dramatic layered cakes such as a Paris‑Brest (choux pastry layered with custard and topped with something crunchy like nuts or crumbling cookie pieces) and entremet cakes with vibrant layers of jam and mousse encased in a shiny glaze; both chefs’ painting backgrounds inform constant conversations about colors, shapes, and heights, exemplified by a pomegranate vacherin cake Pino developed—“an artistic visual for me when it started out and it took me time to get exactly what I wanted.” Practical table-level thinking also shapes plating and color: “We’re always thinking, what if someone orders all four desserts,” Velasco-Kent says, a consideration that led them to add dashes of color when dishes began looking too brown. A two-year-old signature dessert— a lighter honey semifreddo finished with housemade honeycomb candy and a pile of thinly shaved comté cheese—was conceived as a reimagined cheese course to coax American diners into a cheese-forward finish; as Coss explains, “We weren’t the first restaurant serving a cheese plate, but we were reinventing something that, you know, no one had reinvented,” pairing her ice-cream experience from the Creamery at Union Market with the nutty comté. While Pino and Velasco-Kent love the semifreddo, they “are itching for a change” after producing it daily and are developing another cheese-ode that pairs French cheese with strawberries and black pepper. Coss still checks in—especially at weekend brunch—to “check on product and to check on people too,” and underscores the culture she hopes to have instilled: being “good towards each other” and professional support; as she puts it, “Savannah is going into this part where she’s prepping and starting to do developing. For her right now, all she needs to do is absorb. And then Ana, jumping into a pastry chef, now is her time for teaching… they’re taking care of each other, and also, cooking good food.”" - Emily Venezky
