Katalina Diaz was downsizing. In the kitchen of New York’s Café Boulud, where she had recently been promoted to Executive Pastry Chef for the restaurant’s reopening in December, Diaz began customizing petite adaptations of her goodies for a dessert tower. She built the ascendance with exacting precision and a few giggles. There were tiny bursts of bite-sized brilliance, each yummier than the next: first shortbread cookies, then mini tarts and later a gateau basilic mandarine (a basil mandarin orange cake). “I was thinking of making a creamsicle,” she explains, “so I could take people to the park.”
She demures at the thought of amusing guests at a refined place where even an amuse bouche might be composed with tweezers. Diaz is shy, with a professional boldness to match her personal bashfulness. She carries no agent, limited social media presence, no personal accoutrements to finish the dish, which made her ascent to the culinary heights at esteemed Café Boulud at age 28 even more remarkable. As oil avoids water, the blend of Diaz and any form of self-promotion are not a natural emulsion. “I don’t look for attention,” she says. “Have my desserts over here. I’ll be over there.”
The kitchen has been home, a sanctuary, her place of exploration and discovery since she negotiated extra brownies from her mother’s cupboard and rued unnecessary equipment. She still laughs at the day her mom, Fanny, came home gladly waving her purchase of a new bowl scraper. Katalina and her siblings broke into symphonic protest. “Wuh, wuh, wait,” she remembers pleading, “there’s nothing for us to lick.”
The daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants grew up with five siblings in Huntington, Long Island, near New York City. Katalina often helped Fanny in the kitchen, and soon found her sweet spot. “Cutting meat grossed me out,” she recalls, “so my mom left me with desserts. It was great, because I always knew every time I made a birthday cake, I made someone happy.”
When Katalina was 14, her brother, Sean, noticed her gazing at the cake counter in the local King Cullen store. “I was mezmerized,” she says. “If I could only do that . . .” What did she mean “if?” Sean wondered. So he asked the owners about a job for his sister who was too timid to ask for herself. She boxed cookies and sighed at the colors fashioned by the main cake decorator until he trusted Katalina to make the edible art that would soon become her side gig. If classrooms were a chore; kitchens were a joy.
Through word of mouth and tummy, Katalina made cakes-for-hire when she was 15, keeping her mother in the dark about the burgeoning profession. “I didn’t want anyone to scare me away from doing it,” she recalls. “I had to kick mom out of the kitchen. She’d ask who this cake was for and that cake. I’d tell her, ‘just for friends.’” Katalina felt sneaky. “I mean, they were paying me to play,” she says. Whatever the occasion, Diaz baked. If there was an anniversary, an engagement, a retirement, a birthday for the neighbor’s pet hamster, Diaz took to the kitchen. “I found every excuse to bake,” she recalls. “Oh, the football team won. Here, I made you some cupcakes.’” She would have baked in order to celebrate days ending in Y.
Diaz took BOCES classes, remote technical courses held for schools that pool resources in order to provide hands-on learning. That included culinary courses. There she traded pencils for ladles, and she found problem solving instinctive. “That bus to culinary was the best part of my day,” she says. “There was something about just being there that made me want to succeed.” And to thrive. As with many immigrants searching for a better life in the U.S., the Diaz family practiced vigilant, honest work. “For us it was all about earning a living, but not so much finding your dream job.”
Diaz was determined to find hers. She went to the Culinary School of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and again, she excelled once she went from school desk to kitchen table. “The written part scared me,” she recalls. “I’m not a good test taker or note taker. I’d much rather see it and do it. When I sat down to write, I thought I was wasting my parents’ money.”
Leave it to Diaz’s peers at CIA to notice what she missed. She was the first to arrive, the last to leave, the eager teammate who offered help as she would at the family table. In 2016, her graduating class hosted a charitable benefit, assigning the honors for head chef and pastry chef by class vote. Diaz didn’t raise her hand, so her classmates raised it for her, unanimously choosing her to lead the pastry team for the event, at which she composed a sorghum, buckwheat and green apple finale. “I loved the environment there,” she says; “being around friends who thought like me and made kitchen their life,”
My mom left me with desserts. It was great, because I always knew every time I made a birthday cake, I made someone happy.
Soon after, the school held a career fair, and Diaz gave her resume to bakeries, hoping to find a place to build cakes and help pay her student loans. On her way out of the large room, she noticed representatives from the Dinex Group sitting at a table. A chef from the Boulud Sud restaurant mentioned that Daniel Boulud’s team had an opening for a pastry cook, so Diaz left her information behind, with few expectations, and was almost surprised to get the email setting up a visit to Daniel, Boulud’s flagship tour de culinary force. Diaz was intimidated. “A friend of mine staged there and told me about putting hazelnut skins on petit fours,” she recalls. “I was terrified.” Diaz arrived early to an empty restaurant and waited. Eventually Ghaya Oliveira, the executive pastry chef, called on Diaz to help with wedding cakes. “Here,” she directed, “pipe this to look like that.”
Diaz piped her 150 portions and awaited further instruction. She saw the next stages of Oliveira’s preparations and began copying them. Chef Ghaya was stunned. “Wait for me to tell you . . .” Oliveira interrupted herself once she saw Diaz’s work. “Okay,” she said. “those are perfect, but next time wait for me.”
Again Oliveira took to the piping bag, putting even more intricate designs onto plates until the narrative repeated itself once Diaz copied her. “Wait, I didn’t tell you how to . . .” Oliveira shook her head. “Actually, yours are better than mine, but don’t get ahead of me.”
Oliveira knew a talent when she saw it. Diaz had the job by the end of the day. She began with stints at four designated production stations (ice cream, dough, tuile and chocolate), at times handling double duty by spreading tuile into the hot oven, then throwing on a coat and heading into the industrial freezer to shape ice cream into its assigned mold. Hers was an all-weather shift.
When Oliveira left on New Year’s Day in 2020, Shaun Velez took over as Daniel’s executive pastry chef, and Diaz was crafting petit fours, bon bons and mini tartlets to fit into boxes. Then the pandemic hit, not so much stalling Diaz’s career momentum, but briefly changing its trajectory. Boulud reduced his operations, donating food to Citymeals on Wheels, packaging treats for Goldbelly and keeping open only his flagship restaurant for outdoor dining. Diaz became the unofficial cannelle coordinator and mad madeleine maker, crafting goodies by the canyon. Word had it that she actually slept, but it was only a rumor.
As Daniel gradually reopened, Velez left Diaz in charge of gift desserts that customers received for birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions. Befitting her sensibilities, Diaz dedicated the dessert to family, specifically her grandmother, Bolivia, who used to bring her chocolate from Ecuador. “That was the good stuff, the special chocolate,” Diaz recalls, “just because it came from my grandparents.” Diaz remembered the times Bolivia made Concord grape juice with fresh garden grapes, so she went back to her childhood and played. Once Chef Katalina jumped off the swing and got out of the sand, she had a Concord jam with sunflower praline, five-spiced Bolivia chocolate mousse and chocolate bisquit.
Diaz has always been inclined to craft a dessert that is story-based as much as flavor-based, a sort of novella by Nutella. Still, both Velez and Boulud, himself, emphasized the need for strong basics.
“First, I wanted Katalina to think French and to understand the French classics in order to evolve,” Boulud explains. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a fruit tart or a cake or a new composition; if someone masters the classics perfectly, understanding depth of flavor and texture, it’s much easier to explore things together. If someone’s mind is always out of the box, it’s difficult to bring them back into the box.”
I found every excuse to bake,” she recalls. “Oh, the football team won. Here, I made you some cupcakes.
As she gained responsibility at Daniel once the pandemic eased, Diaz leaned on expertise from her mentors and built an easy rapport with Boulud. “He’s so approachable,” Diaz says. “He takes time. He’s available. He really loves seeing people do well.”
With Boulud’s confidence in her ingredient cupboard, Diaz grew in her role as pastry sous chef at Daniel. Once restrictions eased, Boulud asked her to run the pastry show at Cafe Boulud. With a menu divided into four categories: La Tradition (French Classics), La Saison (seasonal market specialties), Le Potager (vegetable garden) and Le Voyage (exotic world flavors), Diaz was free to explore.
She called upon Europe to make a classic tart tatin with calvados roasted apples and vanilla smoked ice cream.
Then she took to Asia to complement a Thai menu with Nam Kang Sai, which Boulud tabbed “a really beautiful dessert”: a hollowed-out pineapple with Thai basil granite, kaffir lime, red bean jellies and condensed milk foam. Though the treat is meant to mimic Bangkok street food, it feels so beach-like, you should bring a towel, glasses and sunscreen just for the privilege of eating it.
[Katalina’s] process is so thoughtful. She has a great talent, but she’s not shy to ask for opinions. Some young chefs are afraid of feedback; she has always welcomed feedback. – Daniel Boulud
For brunch, she relied on her Latin heritage by adding pink peppercorns to a chocolate tart that flipped the script on taste evolution, hitting you with chocolate first and spice second.
Diaz didn’t skimp on classic technique, but diners needed round-the-world tickets to ride on her dessert journeys.
Yet perhaps the dessert that most impressed Boulud was a chocolate mille-feuille that took multiple tries to get right. The first one, Boulud explains, was “beautiful, but it needed soul. It needed magic. The cream was maybe too dense. At the end of a meal, you want a certain lightness and gourmandaise.” Boulud advised allowing extra time for the pastry to rise and adding cocoa filling that was, well, less filling. On her next try, Diaz hit it out of the park, or rather put it in the back of the net. “She nailed it perfectly,” Boulud recalls proudly. “The pastry was so well layered with the chocolate. It was just the right touch. She’s not locked into saying, ‘this is my dessert, so that’s all.’ Her process is so thoughtful. She has a great talent, but she’s not shy to ask for opinions. Some young chefs are afraid of feedback; she has always welcomed feedback.”
Coming from Boulud, the compliments are akin to Rembrandt praising your artwork.
“I enjoy working with Katalina,” he explains, “because, you know, I was raised on a farm, and neither of us came from a place where we could enjoy these delicate desserts every day . . . She has a lot of respect for her staff and for the dessert she makes. She is very kind and very committed.”
In the fall, Diaz will take a break for her greatest commitment, her marriage to Gregory Ras, a fellow chef she met at CIA who now works at the Larchmont (N.Y.) Yacht Club. Neighbors will be queueing up for household dinner invitations.
When work calls anew, as acclaim and praise chase her around the kitchen, it will be hard for Diaz to deflect the spotlight with a future that shines so brightly.
Photos by Todd Coleman
(This article appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)
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