Paola Velez: Early Riser

Chef Paola Velez Has Been Lighting up Kitchens Since She Was Born… And Even Before.

By Oprah Davidson

Paola Velez was born for the kitchen because she was practically born in the kitchen. Paola’s mother was working as an accountant and host at the family restaurant called MaryAnn’s, one of nine locations in New York City, when she suddenly went into labor. Paola entered a world of aroma and nourishment and the kitchen has been her honorary home ever since. Today, as executive pastry chef at Providenicia in Washington, D.C., Velez honors her Dominican background and her culinary baptism with desserts that are creative, vibrant and full of life.

In November, just one day after the Michelin Guide named Providencia an Inspector’s Favorite, Velez was still glowing; calm, yet excited, and slightly stunned. The news was fresh, the feeling surreal. Recognition like this was never in the playing cards when she and her business partner, Eric Bruner-Yang, Providencia’s executive chef, first opened. “It was just supposed to be a neighborhood bar,” Velez says, smiling at the memory. “A place that was welcoming to everyone – industry folks, creatives, tourists who don’t know a thing about D.C. – just a place where you could sit down, have a cocktail, eat something delicious and feel seen.”

While Providencia is known for its cocktails and creative culinary mashups, the desserts helped the restaurant achieve viral status almost instantly. Its Baked Alaska became a sensation on the Chinese Pintarest-style app. Little Red Book. “It’s crazy,” Velez laughs, “to be going viral in a country where I don’t even speak the language.” The Michelin Guide described the chef’s playful Japanese twist on Baked Alaska as “wild and unexpected, featuring kakigori-shaved ice with guava and strawberry puree and coconut lime sauce enrobed in a torched meringue.” Velez created a fortified meringue that stood up to humidity without dissolving over shaved ice. The dessert conveyed mastery of both feel and physics. “Baking is an applied science,” she says, “but it’s also intuitive.”

As co-owner of a Michelin-recognized restaurant, Velez is committed to consistency in her dishes, while still showing her creative prowess with desserts such as Plantain Tiramisu with hojicha whipped cream, spiced plantain jam, mascarpone and El Salvadoran rum. She saves some of her out-of-the-box desserts for pop-ups, community events and special initiatives. So only the lucky few get to try her inaugural Holiday Cookie Bento Box, featuring Coconut-Green Sichuan Pepper Shortbread, Espresso Five-Spice Cookie and Taiwanese Pineapple Linzer.

Her signature style – what she calls New Americana – is global, yet approachable. It is nostalgic in its roots, while still honoring the melting pot that makes up U.S. culture. Velez has a rare ability to find the heartbeat among multiple cultures to make one cohesive dish. “I’m taking you on a journey where you don’t have to buy a plane ticket,” she says. “I’m taking you through what I believe is utopia.”

Velez is, indeed, considerate and respectful of cultures when reimagining her dishes as a unity of flavors and cultures. In so doing, she is honoring the immigrant story, treating her creations as love letters to people and places.

Born and raised in the States, but deeply connected to her Dominican roots, Velez credits her summers in the Caribbean mountains of the Dominican Republic with her adaptive, intuitive approach to baking. The changing weather taught her to take her environment; the temperature and humidity; into consideration while baking. Research. Plan. Know your ratios. But be prepared to feel your way through the process. Be prepared to adapt.

Growing up in the heart of the house – the kitchen – a young Paola, not yet 21, absorbed the rhythms of kitchen life, making desserts and hosting small bake sales on the side of Lorimer Street in the pre-gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg to raise money for those less fortunate.

After she graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando in 2009, she worked for Jacques Torres in his Brooklyn chocolate factory for two years. She then took a stint as pastry chef at Milk Bar under Christina Tosi; and later as Lead Pastry Cook at Arroz Restaurant in D.C. She became Executive Pastry Chef at Compass Rose and the Michelin-starred Maydan.

Fast forward to 2020: she became the co-founder of Bakers Against Racism, a global movement that became known as the world’s largest bake sale, raising more than $2.5 million for social justice causes worldwide. That year, she was a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Rising Chef of the Year Award, her first of the many accolades she’d receive over the coming years. During the pandemic, Velez hosted an online streaming show Pastries with Paola, in which she made desserts inspired by her Dominican background.

Her career has been filled with full-circle moments, from the birth on the steps of her family’s restaurant to advocacy on Capitol Hill for maternity leave and restaurant bail-outs of food-industry workers.

In 2024, Velez released her debut cookbook, Bodega Bakes, in which she reimagined Caribbean desserts such as bulla snickerdoodle, inspired by the eggless spice cake often eaten in Jamaica as a school snack or a lunchtime favorite. Her rum punch cake brightly hued with hibiscus leaves tastes like sunshine. With another creation, Velez returns to her roots, taking iconic sticky buns and filling them with plantains, mixing Caribbean influences with Americana; the ooey gooey mixture from the sweetness and starches mimics a date filling. The dessert came from her mother’s suggestion, while the two were watching Guy Fieri. “I’m here to decolonize my dessert,” she explains. Other recipes in her book also highlight Caribbean flavors. “I prefer creative mashups over fusion,” she says. “Fusion often centers on European techniques, but my work is about uplifting the global majority; cultures that shaped what America really tastes like.”

Bodega Bakes appeared on best-of lists compiled by The New York Times, Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Epicurious and Bon Appetit. Last year Velez became the first chef of Dominican heritage to win a media award from the James Beard Foundation.

She hints at a future that might include an encyclopedia of pastry knowledge and even a memoir one day. “But that day has to be later on,” she says. For now, there is more to explore. In particular, Velez wants to learn about desserts that take her beyond her comfort zone. “Do not limit yourself,” she instructs. “You must continue to learn always; new products, new techniques, new places, new cuisines.”

To expand her dessert repertoire, Velez will often take deep dives to research ingredients or flavors to help recreate a friend’s childhood memories through flavors, especially to learn about a food item that the friend is craving because they can’t find it stateside. “I could bake them the thing I’m good at,” she says, “or I can step outside my comfort zone and bake them something that’s hyper-traditional and unique to their region of their country. The generosity and curiosity have helped Velez expand her own pastry and dessert repertoire.

Velez is a firm believer in JOMO – the Joy of Missing Out. “If you do things the right way,” she says, “it’ll circle back to you. It takes time, but it will. Velez continues to shine, open-hearted, ever-curious and ready for the next chapter in her own book.

(This article appeared in the Winter 30 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)