Cookbook | Patrice Demers: maintaining the passion

The catering and gourmet agriculture worlds are full of stories, reflections and solutions. Once a month, we give the floor to those who make up the richness and diversity of Quebec’s food trades.

Iris Gagnon Paradise
The Press

This week, Patrice Demers and his partner Marie-Josée Beaudoin surprised a lot of people by announcing the upcoming closure of their Patrice Pâtissier business, which is nevertheless enjoying dazzling popularity. The pastry chef confides in his vision of the profession, his career, his ambitions.

First serve

“It took me a few years before I knew I was just going to do baking. At first, cooking interested me more. The first years, I really did both. At one point, when I was working at Chez L’Épicier, there was no longer a pastry chef, so I started doing it full time. I saw that I had to learn, that there were things I didn’t know, so I took it as a challenge, I did some research. With hindsight, I think my temperament is more that of a pastry chef — you have to be very organized and methodical — even if I have always felt close to the cooks. »

“I had the chance to work with chefs who appreciated and had good knowledge of pastry. Stelio [Perombelon] is one of the best examples, our collaboration was nevertheless quite long; it started at Leméac and continued at Chèvres. We quickly developed a friendship, Stelio is a very good pastry chef, with a lot of knowledge, so we talked constantly.

“It filled this gap for me, because in my career, I have never worked with a pastry chef. I’m still proud of it, because it’s rare in my job for someone to come out of school and never work with a pastry chef, a mentor. My mentors were more like chefs. The books made up for my lack of knowledge… and hours of research on the internet! [rires]

“My most popular dessert is Le Vert, which I first served at Newtown, then at 400 Coups. I’m not tired of doing it, but I don’t know if today, in 2022, I would create a dessert with green apple, olive oil and pistachio, as I try to to have as many local products as possible in my creations… But I’m very proud of it, it has been important in my career and in terms of taste, it still looks a lot like me. It still corresponds to my way of seeing pastry.

“It’s only recently that we’ve been talking about ‘de-sugaring’ desserts. My idea was never to remove the sugar for a healthy side, it’s really for taste. I don’t like when it’s too sweet. I like it when the dessert isn’t monotonous, when it’s not the same from start to finish. I like the acidity, the salt, the variations in texture, the work on the taste, the bitterness.

“It was thanks to Omnivore that my name reached Ladurée, because they were looking for a Canadian pastry chef for their Yule log collection. When I received their email, I thought it was a joke! I was supposed to go to Omnivore Paris in April, they came to watch my demonstration and the next day I was going to visit the production laboratory. When I took the plane back to Montreal, I was already sending them ideas for yule logs and macaroons. The deadlines were very short, because it was offered everywhere around the world. It was a great experience that required a lot of work. »

second service

“I love the kitchen shot. In the shop, I have less freedom. The first years, I found it really difficult. I created a dessert, sometimes it was still very good, but I wasn’t satisfied: it sounded too French, it wasn’t me!

“At the beginning, we didn’t repay our loan very quickly, and the money we had invested, even less! In the first years, we began to imagine that we would never recover our personal investment. We tried to do too much: the wine bar, the lunches, the caterer. Increasing the volume of desserts is what changed everything. At first we were sold out at two o’clock in the afternoon on Saturdays! It started to get better and, with the pandemic, we finally managed to repay our loan and repay ourselves as well.

“We had been thinking about it since the fall, but it was really in December that we decided that it would be our last Christmas. Financially, it’s fun, but the logistics of the holiday season, the logs, the stress, the management of employees… It’s not so pleasant. This year, in 24 hours, we had sold 850 logs out of 1000. It’s a nice problem; we are lucky, privileged to have this popularity, but we also have to deal with dissatisfied customers. »

“We didn’t feel like expanding or opening more… We received lots of offers to open Patrice Pâtissiers in Quebec City, Toronto, on the South Shore… But Marie-Josée could bear witness to this: I am so control freak that would be unthinkable! I wouldn’t enjoy doing that, seeing my desserts come out somewhere else in a place I can’t oversee.

“I’m really happy to have done it, I have the impression that in eight years, my technical level has gone so much further. The fact of doing this volume with the quality that we offer to the client has taken me to a level that I would never have imagined. »

Third serve

“It is this desire to continue to maintain my passion that also motivates our decision. I felt that I could still continue here, there’s this routine side to the shop that constrains me a bit… The kouing-amanns, I can’t take them off, I have to make them every day, and 200 on Saturdays. There are things like that that I can get away with. »

“In my head, there are two compartments: the creation side of plated desserts, and the boutique side. Since we opened the shop, and especially since we stopped the wine bar part, it’s as if I had put an x ​​on the dessert on the plate. It’s funny, since we started thinking about closing the store, it’s as if I had reopened a door. I created a “Plate desserts” folder on my computer, which hadn’t been there for a long time, and I have so many ideas, it’s scary!

“My cooking side means that I like this exploratory side, testing new ingredients, working with them in different ways. When I discover a new ingredient, or an ingredient that I know but haven’t used much, it’s very motivating. It is to open a track that leads to more and more possibilities. For example, in the next few years, I would like to work with other types of flour, this is something that interests me enormously.

“I like putting myself in danger, I like the unknown. Vegan pastry, at the time of the 400 Coups, I had nevertheless started to explore it. But to do something very refined, in a context of a shop, of take-out desserts, is really different; a plated dessert, you can improvise more. I don’t think I’ve ever done so many tests in my life on recipes so that blindly — because that’s my scale — you can’t tell if it’s vegan or not.

“Right now, the 100% plant-based pastry we have, I’m not ashamed to let anyone taste it. Even when we have pastry chefs from the United States or France who come to visit us, it’s one of the first things I let them taste. I’m pretty proud of that.

“That’s what I want to continue to explore, there’s a lot of future in there, we won’t hide it. I’m not saying that everyone is going to become vegan, but everyone is watching their consumption of animal protein, we have no choice. You have to think about how you consume. Many pastry chefs, it scares them. But me, on the contrary, it motivates me! »