Pandemic Pop-Ups in NYC
IF YOU KNOW | OCT 6, 2020
Natasha Pickowicz
WHO
Pandemic Pop-Ups
WHAT
New York City
WHERE
About
Natasha Pickowicz is an NYC-based pastry chef, writer, and activist. Most recently, she ran the pastry programs at NYC restaurants Altro Paradiso, Flora Bar, and Flora Coffee. Earlier this spring, Natasha was announced as a Finalist for the 2020 James Beard Foundation Awards for Outstanding Pastry Chef, her third year being nominated in that category. Much of her pastry work explores the relationship with baking and social justice, including ongoing collaborations with seminal NYC institutions like Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, God's Love We Deliver, and Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, for whom she produced a massive city-wide bake sale, raising over $150,000 between 2017-2019.
Most recently, Natasha co-founded The Bake Sale Project (TBSP), an online resource that aims to explore and share bake sale strategies for home bakers and professionals alike. Since summer of 2020, Natasha has created her own pastry pop-up called Never Ending Taste, which celebrates the relationship between local farming, social justice, and community bake sales, and have been held at NYC’s Superiority Burger, LA’s Kismet, and San Diego’s Chino Farms.
Highlighter yellow clogs, ice cream cart tricycle draped in flowers, and hyper-herbaceous Vietnamese street food. Sadie Mae Burns and Anthony Ha, the energetic powerhouse couple behind the roving pop-up Ha’s Đậc Biệt, donate their proceeds to a rotating lineup of food justice-centric non-profits, collaborate with people like Sadie’s mom, a florist based out of Hudson, and cook everything I want to eat: whole roasted lamb, crispy shrimp heads, tapioca pudding, and apple pie. I love bumping into them at the Union Square Greenmarket, where you can often find them buying cute vegetables and fruits from local organic farmers.
Eating dessert at Gramercy Tavern is like getting a big, warm hug from Miro Uskokovic himself, the insanely talented pastry chef and all-around lovely human. Since the shutdown, he and his partner Shilpa started Extra Helpings, a “community micro bakery” based out of their home in Sunnyside, Queens. Each week, they post about a different pastry box, stuffed with comforting treats like oatmeal raisin cookies with candied ginger and malted cinnamon snickerdoodles, with a portion of the proceeds going towards local organizations like WoodsideSunnyside Composting.
I had never tried “San Antonio style” tacos until I met Dave Rizo, who runs Yellow Rose, a “Texas cookin’ pop up in the big city” with his partner Krystiana. The flour tortillas are made with Anson Mills Sonoran flour and are thick and chewy; the last time I had one, it was stuffed with fat slices of steak, soupy beans, and grated yellow cheese. They like to pop-up around Brooklyn, at cool venues like Trans Pecos, Doris and Hunky Dory. Also: Dave’s chili is legendary, and I would like some right now, please.
Edith’s appears at Paulie Gee’s every Thursday through Sunday. The sourdough bagels are twisted into the prettiest coil and baked in Paulie’s wood-fired oven. They keep selling out of the pastries before I can get to them, but I hope to someday try the honey apple cake and salted caramel challah knot!
Auzerais Bellamy, a classically trained pastry chef (think: Bouchon Bakery and Benoit), started Blondery, a 100% minority and woman-owned direct-to-consumer virtual bakery, in response to a lack of representation in fine dining. Auzerais specializes in super chic, bite-sized blondies, with signature flavors like cinnamon sugar and Brooklyn blackout, and limited-edition flavors like pumpkin spice.
I first met the pastry chef and writer Doris Ho-Kane when she was working on 17.21 Women, an online archival project that shares stories of Asian Pacific Islander womxn who were cultural and political trailblazers, some well-known (like Grace Lee Boggs or Joan Chen), and many others, like musician Sugar Pie DeSanto, obscured by traditional history-telling. Now, Doris has unveiled Bạn Bè, a new Vietnamese bakery that specializes in delicate, buttery cookies flavored with tamarind, ube, and pandan, and traditional Vietnamese sweets like Chè đậu xanh bánh lọt, a dish of sweet rice pasta and mung bean soup, sweetened with coconut palm syrup.
YARDY, a creative studio founded by the wonderful DeVonn Francis, a queer, first-generation Jamaican-American artist and chef, celebrates Caribbean culture and identity through food, performance, social justice, and storytelling. They’re in the midst of an ongoing residency at the downtown cafe The Smile, where DeVonn cooks modern, tropical dishes informed by his Caribbean heritage and NYC culinary experiences, like torched banana cake, Scotch Bonnet aioli, and mango chutney.
Follow Lani Halliday (and her bakery, Brutus Bakeshop) on IG for the most current updates for what she does next, because this woman works so hard and has so much going on! Back in the spring, I ordered a box of her epic tahini chocolate chip cookies; earlier this summer, I had more of her delicious gluten-free, vegan pastries (like tropical pop-tarts festooned with sprinkles!) and boozy coffee slushies at Maison Yaki, near Prospect Park; and just last month she just wrapped up another pop-up at Dame, a collaboration with Woldy Kisuni and Ursula, in a Filipino-New Mexican-American fusion mash-up, with proceeds going toward The Soapbox Present, a community-driving initiative that brings art to Black communities.
SIMILAR ARTICLES
“If you stop by Rito’s Bakery, ask for my dad Jim, and tell him I sent you!”