Chef report: Suzanne Goin launches Larder Baking Company

Award-winning Los Angeles chef Suzanne Goin and her business partner Caroline Styne have gone into the wholesale bread business with the launch of Larder Baking Company, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Goin and Styne run Lucques, Tavern and A.O.C. restaurants. Their bakery is producing 2,000 loaves a day for restaurants and retailers, some of which are certified organic. The bakery also has applied for non-GMO certification.

This isn’t Styne’s first foray in retail baking. According to her biography on the Lucques website, at the age of 22 she co-founded Basically Baked Inc., a producer and distributor of specialty foods.

Goin isn’t the only chef in Los Angeles with a wholesale bread operation. Nancy Silverton of Campanile and Osteria Mozza has operated La Brea Bakery since 1989, the same year Styne co-founded Basically Baked. It’s unclear what kind of competitor Larder will be to La Brea, but the latter definitely has a head start: According to Mozza’s website, La Brea’s goods are now sold in 17 different countries.  

On the opposite coast, Fabio Trabocchi’s seafood restaurant Fiola Mare finally opened on Feb. 21 in Washington, D.C. Trabocchi discussed his plans for the restaurant with NRN last year. The restaurant was originally slated to open in December, but a Feb. 1 fire further delayed the opening, Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema reports.

A few days after the fire, Sietsema noted to his Facebook friends that the previous restaurant where general manager Paolo Novello worked also had a delayed opening due to fire. That was Thomas Keller’s widely acclaimed New York City flagship, Per Se, so maybe it’s a good omen.

Speaking of Thomas Keller, the bicoastal chef’s Napa Valley flagship, The French Laundry, could be expanding, the Napa Valley Register reports.

The Yountville, Calif., town council has rezoned two single-family houses neighboring the restaurant to allow them to be used for commercial purposes, according to the Register, which said Keller and his team planned to remove at least one of the houses to expand the kitchen and garden, rearrange parking and expand office space. The 62-seat dining room would remain unchanged, it said.

Scott Conant’s foray into Toronto is coming to an end. The New York City-based celebrity chef is closing his Scarpetta location at that city’s Thompson Hotel on March 15, Toronto Life reports.

Filling the soon-to-be vacant space will be Colette Grand Café and Bakery, operated by The Chase Hospitality Group, which own fine-dining fish restaurant The Chase and its more casual sister concept The Chase Fish and Oyster.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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