Home is Where the Tart is

Lucia Merino’s Thoughts were Never far from Her Native San Juan. Now, the Globetrotting Pastry Chef is Back in her Native Puerto Rico.

By Oprah Davidson

After years of working under the tutelage of renowned chefs—Frederic Monnet at The Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne, Antonio Bachur at the St. Regis in Miami, and Richard Gras at Oaks Restaurant in Dallas—recent James Beard nominee Lucia Merino stepped out on faith to open her own patisserie in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Though her professional training came from the reputable Johnson & Wales University.)  Along the way, she’s trained in Madrid and Barcelona and was profoundly influenced by mentors such as Jordi Vallès and Richard Gras, who shaped her vision of leadership—showing her the value of integrity, dedication, and leading by example. Reflecting on both the exemplary and harsh management styles she has experienced, Merino possesses a deep desire to lead with empathy, compassion and uncompromising standards. Encouraged by supporters, Merino launched her first venture selling macarons from a rented kitchen in Dallas. That pivotal step ultimately brought her back to Puerto Rico, where she now inspires others to become the mentors and leaders they once needed— all while building Lucia Patisserie, a pastry business rooted in resilience, excellence and heart.   

What first drew you to baking and pastry, and when did you know it would become your career? 

My mom used to bake when I was little and sell to pharmacies, hotels and restaurants. She would let us help her. My grandmothers would always bake our cakes and other treats for our birthday. When I started school and I saw all the techniques and all the ways of creating beautiful, delicious things, that’s when I really took it seriously and understood how much I loved it. 

Given that you’ve trained in cities like Miami, Madrid, Barcelona, and Dallas, how did each of those experiences shape your style as a pastry chef? 

I started with Chef Frederic Monnet, whose work is very classically French, which is my favorite [style] because [it is simple, but delicious]. It’s very straightforward, so you can really taste the ingredients. He didn’t do a lot of crazy flavors. He just used a lot of fresh fruit and curds. That’s where my love for French pastries came from. Then when I went to Spain, I saw the different techniques like molecular gastronomy, which I really enjoyed. That’s not my thing, but it was very cool to learn all those new tricks and the different flavors that they have. Going back to Miami helped me to refine my presentation. Antonio [Bachour’s] presentations were very sexy, very clean. That helped me develop an eye for details. Working at the Fontainebleau, I did most of the desserts for their steakhouse restaurant. The chef I was working with at the time worked for Per Se and French Laundry. So it was fun to merge classic and delicate things with more homey stuff, because it was for a steakhouse. When I went to Dallas, it was a fine dining restaurant. So I could put everything that I have learned together and do all these plated desserts, which were a lot of fun. But deep down inside, I just really wanted to make things that I crave, that most people can relate to. I think that’s what we have landed on here. I just really wanted people to bite into stuff that warms their heart. And it brings some type of memory to them.

Where did the idea for Lucia Patisserie first take shape?  

When I moved to Barcelona, my husband, Johan [Villafane], moved with me over there. The work hours are a little crazy in independent restaurants. You work the lunch shift, then you go home, then you come back for the dinner shift. It takes up your whole day, but you have around two hours or three hours in between for siesta. I would take that time to venture out in Barcelona with Johan. We would ride our bikes around and see what we’d find. We had very limited amounts of money, so we found this little coffee shop/bakery shop. It had two or three tables outside and it was called Tarts and Quiche, which was also funny because the name was in English. They would have coffee and different types of tarts and quiches. We would go there and just sit and play cards or dominoes, because it was very budget friendly. And we’re like, imagine something like this in Puerto Rico. We just kept throwing the idea out there. But then in Miami the coffee shop situation started booming, before Starbucks. All these different independent coffee shops started popping up and the environment in them was very cool. You could take your laptop and grab your fresh roasted coffee and a pastry. And we were really liking this vibe. I think it’s something that maybe was always in the back of my mind, but I never really felt confident enough to do it.

After years abroad, what inspired you to return to Puerto Rico to open Lucia Patisserie?  

At that time, I had already lived outside of Puerto Rico for almost 11 years. We would come back here to visit our family and when you start seeing people getting older and your cousins having babies you feel like you’re missing out on a lot of good stuff. Also, there weren’t a lot of these types of bakeries here when I came. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to bring something new and exciting for the community. I thought it would be cool to kind of give back to our island, also supporting and buying as much local as possible to give back to the people here. So it’s been a good stepping stone for other pastry cooks or pastry chefs to come and work here, learn some techniques and then they go out and do their thing.  

What local ingredients do you most enjoy working with and why? 

Yes, we use a lot of local items, both sweet and savory, like vegetables. In Puerto Rico, we buy local milk, local butter, local eggs. We have some local cheeses and a lot of veggies and fruits, but my favorites are the tropical fruits: pineapples, mangoes, bananas and the guavas. it’s just so delicious and so refreshing and so bright. They make you want to keep going for more. Also, there are just so many things you can do with them.  

How do you approach blending both the French pastry techniques and the Puerto Rican flavors?  

We do a lot of classic French pastries. But then if I’m making a tart, instead of using the raspberries, maybe let’s put mango on it. We had a cheese danish. Then we think, “well, how can we make it [reflect] Puerto Rico?]  We have a very famous puff pastry called quesito. You put cream cheese in the middle, you roll it up, you sprinkle it with salt and a honey glaze, and you bake it. It’s very crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside. So, we make them in a different shape with a croissant dough and we use our cheese danish filling. French basics like la palmerita or los palmiers are very famous here also, so we like to give them a twist. We eat a lot of cinnamon here in Puerto Rico, so we’ll add that or nuez moscada, which is nutmeg. We also like to do a lot of jams with the fruits, instead of using guava from a can. We make a cheese and guava danish with croissant dough. We can make beautiful fresh mango tarts or a mango cake or coconut. What can we do with the coconut? For instance, like an almond jaconde, we’ll add coconut to it and then make a coconut cream and then put the fresh mango on top.

What has been your biggest challenge as well as biggest reward in owning and operating a bakery?  

My biggest challenge has to do with my way of thinking, my way of being, accepting that I need to heal a lot of my traumas and past experiences to be able to provide a safe working environment and be a good leader for my team. The biggest rewards I believe are the relationships that have come out of being in this industry and the community that has formed around our business. Also to see that the people that have worked here blossom, to see their commitment and how wonderful it is to have them, but also the ones that have left and to see how empowered they felt that they went and did their own thing. That’s very rewarding for me too.  

As a business owner, how has your experience influenced your leadership style? 

I really try to remember how I felt when I was told how to do things and how I felt in those environments; what I liked and didn’t like. I really try to be very conscious of that, remembering that everybody understands things in a different way. This has really taught me how to communicate better and be very precise. Let’s verify that you understand it before you do anything. At least the first time, we’re going to do it together just to make sure we’re on the same page. [Give them] opportunities to grow and make them feel safe. For me, that happened mostly because of how I was treated in the past and how horrible it felt. I don’t want anybody to feel like that. I want to make sure that they know that I’m looking out for them, that they don’t have to figure it out alone.    

Lucia Patisserie has become a community favorite in San Juan. How do you think a bakery can shape or reflect the culture of its neighborhood? 

We’re trying to be very considerate with our neighbors, with the community and with giving back. For instance, we do a lot of recycling and composting. We went from literally having almost two bags of trash every day to now having maybe three bags of trash a week. We also try to be very considerate of supporting local suppliers and using clean ingredients while treating our employees very well. We sell dog treats and a portion of the proceeds goes to the sanctuary of dogs in Cabo Rojo, in the West Coast. We’ve gotten asked for donations for shoes, and we went personally to Guatemala to give the shoes to this orphanage of kids. Usually, my husband is the face of the business. He’s very charismatic and kind. The ladies we have in service are amazing, so I think just the whole vibe is just people feeling respected.

You were a recent nominee of the prestigious James Beard Award. What does that recognition mean to you, professionally and personally?  

It was always a dream. I’m very grateful, but I realized that as soon as I got nominated, I still felt the same. It was in that process of no matter how many prizes and nominations, it’s not until I heal what’s inside that I’m going to start feeling good about what I’m doing. So that really made me grow. It also made me extremely proud after all this hard work, and all these years, because in Puerto Rico, nobody has ever been nominated for that category. We were the pioneers in opening that door for Puerto Rico being a destination for good pastries. It would not only help me, but it will help the other bakers and other people want to do their thing here too. I think that’s mostly what brought me excitement just to be on the map and putting Puerto Rico on the map. It’s not just beaches here. We have a really good culinary scene.

How do you keep evolving as a chef while also maintaining consistency in your bakery’s offerings?  

There are certain pastries we must keep because they are items that we’ve done since the beginning. We have developed a menu that has roughly 30 things we make every week. About 20 of them are always here. And then we’ll just play around with the other ten. Admittedly, I see a lot of Instagram reels and posts that inspire me. So we think how can we do something like this, but with our own spin? One of my employees, Evangelis, and I will often bounce ideas off each other. She loves very intricate work, and she has a very beautiful hand for details. She also comes to me with ideas, and we have this dry erase board where we’ll start drawing the dessert and what we’re going to put in each thing. In addition, I am continuously learning by taking advanced pastry courses. I try to always keep new things happening. However, when we try to venture too far off from what we do on a daily basis, people are not too keen to repeat the same purchase. When you wake up on Sunday, do you want the mousse with the glaze and all the fancy techniques or do you want a cinnamon roll? I want a cinnamon roll. That’s what we realized with our customers. They usually come back for the comfort classics.

What advice would you give to aspiring pastry chefs who dream of opening their own bakery someday?  

Focus and do your thing. In the beginning, I was always comparing myself to everyone else. Thankfully, because of my husband, I was able to develop this focus and not look at what others are doing. Do it from the heart with good intentions because you really want to do something good for the people and yourself. Remember why you’re doing it and just give it your all.

What new projects, flavors or directions are you most excited to explore at Lucia Patisserie? 

We have been presented with different opportunities of expanding or doing other projects. But it’s also important to live life and enjoy our downtime. I’ve come to finally realize that I don’t need to be busy all the time to prove that I’m working hard. We enjoy going with my dog to the beach and just sitting there for a while. I believe there’s a different value to that now. That’s what we’re focusing on more: work-life balance.

 If someone were visiting Puerto Rico for the first time, which pastry from your bakery would you insist they try and why?  

My personal favorite is the canelé. I really love the crunchy exterior. We use local dark rum and vanilla beans. But I think if you’re not from here, you have to try the quesito. Since we put it on the shelves, we haven’t been able to take it off. Or we make a cheese and guava danish. People love that one. The danish is delicious because we slather the jam all over it and you get your hands dirty with guava jam and it’s just luscious. You’ll get a sense of the flavors of the local bakeries here through those pastries.

Where do you see Puerto Rican pastry culture headed in the next five years, and how do you hope to contribute to it? 

It’s a very exciting time for the culinary scene in Puerto Rico. People are understanding that we have world worthy cuisine here. It’s not just rice and beans. Since we came back in 2015 until now, the growth has been amazing. Last year, I believe we broke the record for the most chefs nominated for James Beard Awards. That means that they’re really putting the name of Puerto Rico out there in the culinary world. Our bakery has become a landing place for people to come and work. [They become] inspired and then jump off to do their thing. I teach them what I know and then help them spread their wings and fly. I’ve even received interns from my alma mater, so it feels good to know that I’m giving back. It’s full circle. 

(This article appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)