Beyond the rave reviews and daily or weekly visits from legions of loyal customers, among them Ina Garten, the women in charge of Carissa’s the Bakery needed little in the way of confirmation that they’re doing something right.
Then about a week ago came the congratulatory text messages in Carissa Waechter’s friend-group thread: The bakery, established in 2017, had been named a semifinalist for a James Beard Award in the Best Bakery category.
Carissa’s has shops on Pantigo Road and Newtown Lane in East Hampton and Bay Street in Sag Harbor.
It wasn’t its first James Beard nomination — and Carissa’s went on to win the award for best restaurant design in 2020 after completing a big renovation — but it hit a bit differently this time around.
“I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ ” Ms. Waechter, a founding owner along with Lori Chemla, recalled in an interview this week. “At first I thought our older James Beard award had been reposted somewhere.”
Ms. Chemla called the nomination “an enormous honor, and very humbling.”
“Many people spent a lot of money hiring marketing agents to help them with nominations,” she said. “We weren’t looking.”
Indeed, they’d been busy doing all the things that go into running a successful food-service business: freshening up their menu offerings seasonally while at the same time trying out new recipes and continuing the popular products, customer service, and cleanliness standards that got them where they are today.
Ms. Waechter and Ms. Chemla, along with Laura Lopez, the head chef, Renie Costello, a managing partner, and other key members of the bakery’s leadership, meet every Sunday afternoon for reflections and tastings of what’s to come. This week, the featured treats included a new take on its classic avocado toast on sourdough, freshened up with fava beans, lemon, parsley, and lettuce; an appetizer of whole-milk ricotta spread with chives, za’atar, olive oil, and flaky salt, paired with a demi baguette; a special croissant incorporating sesame paste and cardamom glaze, and a Baltic-inspired focaccia bread with goat cheese, roasted red pepper, cherry tomato, and charred eggplant. There was also a raspberry Linzer tart — basically a bigger, juicier take on a classic cookie — and a hibiscus and poached-pear tart with gold leaf and crème fraîche.
Eric Petschek Photo
Safe to say there’s lots to look forward to in the coming weeks and months.
“We all wind up thinking about something for next week — something to work on and play with in the bakery, or something that we will hide and never talk about,” Ms. Waechter said.
“Everybody brings something to the table,” Ms. Costello added. “The value of having so many different people giving their opinion makes it fuller, and you get to see it in different ways.”
The process keeps things lively and cultivates success. “If you come here and you don’t find anything new on the menu, you might get bored,” Ms. Chemla said.
It all makes being in the bakery business “so much more than just a job,” Ms. Waechter said.
And it’s gratifying, they said, to have created such a successful woman-owned and managed business.
It is “a better business. It’s a kinder, softer, gentler, motherly place to work,” Ms. Chemla said. “There is no drama. Well, hardly any drama.”
Carissa’s the Bakery is the only Long Island food or beverage business to have been nominated for a James Beard Award this year. It is competing for the Best Bakery award against 19 other bakeries from around the country. The next step is a series of unpublicized visits from secret shoppers and undercover tasters to help narrow the field down to a round of finalists, who are to be announced in April. The final awards will be presented in June.
The goal of the award is to “recognize exceptional talent in the culinary and food media industries, as well as a demonstrated commitment to equity, sustainability, and creating a culture where all can thrive,” according to an announcement from the James Beard Foundation.
Ms. Costello called being in the hospitality business “a wonderful feeling. You’re nurturing and feeding people.”
Ms. Chemla credited the entire Carissa’s team for laying the foundation that made the James Beard nomination possible. “It’s important to know that is really made up of all the people who you don’t see — people in the background, who work hard and get up really early in the morning and care, the overnight bakers in the summer, the people who work here till midnight cleaning the facility.”
“There’s been mornings where you’d rather stay in bed, but then you think about wanting things to be a certain way,” Ms. Waechter said. “You know everyone’s coming in and you want them to have the greatest experience, and that’s your motivation to keep going.”
