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UNDER THE TOQUE
After spending 14 years as executive pastry chef of the legendary Le Bec-Fin in Philadelphia, Robert Bennett set out on his own in 2002 with his own shop in the suburb of Cherry Hill, NJ. The operation, which caters mostly to wholesale customers, might more appropriately be called a factory. Bennett uses state-of-the-art equipment to produce large volumes of chocolates, cookies and pastry, reserving his skills and those of his employees for the tasks that really require it.
The son of a chemist, Bennett says he enjoys how pastry combines art and science. His customers seem to enjoy the fruits of his labors, and late last y ear he opened a retail store in downtown Philadelphia.
Title: chef and owner, Miel Patisserie, Cherry Hill, N.J., and Philadelphia
Birth date: April 4,1963
Hometown: Lynchburg, Va.
Education: culinary degree at New England Culinary Institute, Montpelier, Vt., 1984
Career highlights: working as President Ronald Reagan's guest pastry chef at his inauguration; representing the United States in first biennial World Cup pastry championships in 1989; running Le Bee-Fin pastry kitchen for 14 years; opening Miel Patisserie
Tell me about cooking for President Reagan's inauguration.
It was his second inauguration, in January of 1985. I had returned to the New England Culinary Institute; they had asked me to come back and be an instructor. I taught first-semester pastry. Then the executive pastry chef-instructor left, and they promoted me. During that time Louis Szathmary of The Bakery in Chicago was in charge of organizing [food for] the entire inauguration for President Reagan, and he gave me the cake to do. I got an architect to do a blueprint for the U.S. Capitol, and I built that out of pastillage. That was sort of the cherry on top. We served 44,000 people.
How big was the cake?
It was 16 feet by 8 feet. It was over 8...