4 minute read
FROM FOOD LOVER TO DESSERT ARTIST
Chef Tamara Vinson’s innovative desserts include this white chocolate rose pear with a rasperry basil center, sugar cookie shell, fresh raspberry, and housemade sauce. PHOTO BY KAREN DAY.
Chef Tamara Vinson brings something sweet to Coa Del Mar
By Juliana Renno Bounds
A pastry chef can make all the difference in a dining experience—they curate ingredients, imagine presentations, and craft a balanced, exciting dessert menu, setting the tone for the perfect end of a meal. And some chefs just happen to find themselves in the kitchen, among fouets and mixers, cream and syrups, orange zests and pralines.
Tamara Vinson, the pastry chef at Eagle’s new Coa Del Mar, fell into the profession while looking for a change. To her, the beginning was simple. “I like to eat! That’s where it all begins…this was mostly a newfound love for baking. Making dessert is an art,” she reflected.
In 2021, Vinson was working as a night server at a popular diner, when she decided to reorganize her schedule. She moved on to Barbacoa in the summer of that year—a change that set off her journey to the pastry kitchen.
“It was a change of pace for sure,” she described. “Barbacoa had an entirely different mentality.”
At the fine-dining restaurant, she learned about wines and wine pairing, elevated foods and dazzling presentations, the value of good plating and the showmanship of serving. “Serving at Barbacoa required a completely different set of skills, and I wasn’t really good at them,” Vinson confessed.
After two months serving, Vinson hoped to rearrange her hours to coordinate with her son’s school schedule. She was interested in the kitchen and knew she could pick up skills on the job.
There, she learned all kinds of little things about all desserts, from flavors and colors to cooking and baking techniques. Before she knew it, she was not only prepping and cooking desserts, but also developing dessert specials. “We ran specials at Barbacoa for almost a year,” she remembered. “It was a lot of experimentation.”
The experimentation paid off and Vinson became the pastry chef at Coa Del Mar. With ideas mostly based on the previous year’s specials at Barbacoa, she designed the full dessert menu filled with fresh twists—and an Italian flair—on traditional desserts, like bread pudding and carrot cake.
Each dessert on the menu has a combination of textures and flavors, plated in creative, sometimes big, ways. Edible shiny white pearls (they’re chocolate!) and a boozy, silky Grand Marnier crème anglaise accompany the layers of fluffy chocolate mousse ganache. A fresh and tangy berry medley balances the sweetness of the delicately flavored, coconut crème brûlée. The other five menu items also have a combination of textures and flavors, from crispy cannolis and soft donuts to bananas and key lime.
“I like to start with the ingredients, maybe a fruit, the flavors, work on the textures—spongy, creamy, and crunchy—and go from there,” Vinson explained. “Nothing too sweet. I like to keep the balance.”
Vinson is happy with her decision to move into the kitchen. She continues to work on creating interesting desserts and specials for Coa Del Mar, and finding new, creative ways to present them. She said she is now searching for different molds for a chocolate sphere with a rose cream dessert and experimenting with new garnishes like gold flakes.
And while prepping and baking don’t change much from day to day, Vinson hopes to learn more about the pastry world—gelato making is next, and she hopes to learn about chocolatiering in the future.
