Behind the Line: Quality Eats, the Desserts
Welcome to Behind the Line NYC edition, your all access pass to the top kitchens in the game. So say hello to the Morning Bun, a brunch-time wonder.
Chef Cory Colton, Executive Pastry Chef at Quality Eats.
Have you met the man behind the dangerously good desserts at downtown newcomer Quality Eats? Here’s chef Cory Colton, the Executive Pastry Chef at Quality Branded, five-years running. Exactly how does the chef stay so cool behind the line? Chef Cory and his team all scream for ice cream—and tons of teamwork.
Since Colton started with the company, his M.O. has been to build a tight unit, where everyone had a voice. Take the dessert names like, “This Sh*t is Bananas,” (featuring roasted banana ice cream, peanut butter caramel, candied bacon and cinnamon toast). Quality ingredients starting with Battenkill Valley Creamery milk and cream. After adding in the rest of the ingredients (eggs, sugar, invert sugar – honey, corn syrup, agave, you get the picture) they heat up the mixture and let it mingle overnight. Everything freezes up in the ice cream machine and it’s then packed into pints and firmed up overnight. (Protip alert: For scooping, use a “Zeroll” scoop for that OG natural look.) Totally a team effort.
Pastry cook Donna, preparing the roasted banana ice cream for “This Sh*t is Bananas.”
Now that you’ve got his vibe, let’s dig deeper. Chef is a big believer in visual appetite. A curated color palette and a nuanced texture profile is the ticket to keeping eaters happy as pie. Colton says that the combination of smoothness, bite and crunch is the recipe for success.
And then there’s Morning Bun. (You met this brunch-time-wonder at the most recent #ResyBCrawl.) On one of Chef’s R&D excursions, he ordered chocolate croissants from all the neighborhood joints. He asked himself how can he could up the ante. The answer, he takes croissant dough, smears it with a rich almond paste, sprinkles some mini chocolate chips, and coils it into the pan. Ante: upped.
1. Chef smearing almond paste in on the croissant dough. 2. Chef rolling up the dough. 3. Coiling it up for the buttered baking sheet. 4. Finished product, the Morning Bun.
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