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Everyone’s heard about cool, new La Condesa. The hot chef. The hip zip code on Second Street. The amazing architecture by Michael Hsu and interior design by Joel Mozersky who also brought the A-list of other Austin restaurants to life.
But there’s one more piece to this pie: pastry chef Laura Sawicki’s scrumptious desserts. Sure, we all want to be svelte, but life’s too short to skip these unique treats which are complex and cooling in the frequent Austin heat. Here, dessert is not an afterthought. It is as well-executed as the hand-crafted cocktails, the inventive menu, and the striking ambiance.
Surprisingly, the savvy 30-year-old Sawicki, a recent transplant from New York City, didn’t plan on being a pastry chef. A lover of art since childhood, she studied art/art history at the esteemed Parson’s School of Design and later received her B.A. in art history at Colorado College.
“After much soul searching, I decided to enroll in the two-year baking and pastry program at the Culinary Institute of America in upstate New York,” says Sawicki. She then worked in several small bakeries and assisted an artist in a six-month food styling/fine art project before moving back to the city and becoming executive pastry chef at Paloma in Brooklyn. There, she worked with René Ortiz, now the globetrotting chef of La Condesa Austin.
She finally found her artistic “voice” in pastry which allowed her to express herself more freely than art. “I love the versatility of the medium. Just a few ingredients combined properly can produce countless results,” she says. And countless delectable results you will find at La Condesa. What other Mexican restaurant in Austin serves torta de queso de cabra? That’s a silky chevre cheesecake made from local Pure Luck farm’s goat cheese. It sits in a pool of rich golden saffron custard sauce and is garnished beautifully with rum-infused pineapple nuggets and a graham cracker streusel.
“I make the graham crackers from scratch to use as streusel garnish for the cheesecake,” explains Sawicki. This, along with baking bread daily for the restaurant, is just one of the many extra steps she painstakingly takes to get precise results. Another top seller is the tarta de chocolate salada, a deliriously rich chocolate caramel tart in a chocolate pastry shell sprinkled with grey salt and honey-popped amaranth, joined by a scoop of rich homemade coconut ice cream garnished with toasted coconut. She uses the entire fresh coconut to make the dessert, from the juice for the ice cream to the flesh for the toasted garnish.
“For the chocolate tart, I import the dulce de leche, from Argentina, my homeland,” says Sawicki. (It is a special caramel that is difficult to recreate.) Just about all the other ingredients in her desserts are sourced locally, including the vibrant micro cilantro which garnishes her cheesecake, a brilliant touch that adds a tiny bite to the sweet. Her wildly creative crema cocida, a cool and creamy Mexican style panna cotta, which normally is considered a plain dessert, is adorned with homemade blueberry salsa, queso fresco cheese, and darling micro basil. Ah, the fresh aroma!
Fans wonder: Where does she come up with these great ideas? “Besides just letting my imagination run wild, I let the seasons dictate what produce/herbs I use. A lot of forethought goes into my food before it even begins to take shape in the kitchen,” explains Sawicki.
Chocoholics will dig the spicy boca negra, a slightly piquant, warm, flourless chocolate cake, served with caramelized bananas and banana ice cream … this one melts in your mouth. She also makes homemade ice cream in flavors of crema supreme, cajeta (Mexican cheese), chocolate-canella, and toasted almond crunch. These rotate on a weekly basis along with some standard desserts and inventive newbies.
Sawicki says the ultimate Texas summer dessert is the blackberry-peach pie served with ice cream. “I think guests really like my pie dough because it’s super flaky and a touch salty but it lets the fresh local fruit speak for itself. Served warm along with ice cream … can you think of anything better?” Well, not really, unless you are a flan fanatic. Sawicki’s silky version in dreamy flavors like burnt honey-lavender, Texas peach and lemon crema will make you swoon.
We can’t help but wonder what the future holds for this young dessert diva blessed with an abundance of talent. “Eventually I would like to own a space, not a traditional bakery so much as a place for people to gather with incredible food based on pastry,” she says. For now, she is just enjoying her work at La Condesa. “What’s not to like about Austin?” I love it! The quality of life and the people I have met have quickly made my transition rather effortless and I’ve only been here since February.”
So when you find yourself among the beautiful people at the happening La Condesa restaurant, don’t be so distracted that you forget dessert. You’ll always be delightfully surprised with your finale, and rest assured, the desserts are so intensely flavored, you’ll want to share. Plus, the longer you linger, you never know who you’ll spot. On our last visit, Rob Lowe was expected in the house!
More Info
Laura Sawicki - La Condesa
512.499.0300 • lacondesaaustin.com
400 W. 2nd Street, Suite A