If you have read my blog for a while you may recognize the man with me in the picture above. This is Chris Herrin. He is the head pastry chef for the Bouchon Bistro and Bakery in the Venetian Hotel.
My husband and I met Chris a little more than a year ago and we became fast friends. Chris is a genuinely great guy and he also makes incredible food. He has a dream to open his own place someday and he LOVES breakfast. It is his favorite meal of the day. He recently started a blog to share his experience building this dream of his.
Go check it out HERE. His blog address is www.henandthebaker.com/blog. There he writes about his dream of starting the greatest breakfast and bakery company ever, his love of food, recipes he is creating, and events he is planning.
One of the fun things about being a chef (so he tells me and I can imagine) is the creativity with foods. Of course Chris makes all the really classic favorites like one of our favorite Bouchon desserts - the lemon tart. (Shown below but I wish I could give you a taste rather than a look because really, I mean really, it is phenomenal.)
But there are also always new ideas and twists on old favorites. We went to Bouchon last week with my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and a few people who worked on the singles conference with my parents. Chris sent out the most unique, delicious, and just plain cool desserts I have ever eaten.
They recently acquired a cotton candy machine. So they have been experimenting with it. Now I have to say I don't really like cotton candy. I mean it is sticky and too sweet and messy. So I was a bit skeptical when this fluff of cotton candy came out from the kitchen.
I know the photo is terrible quality. Sorry. But that is a fluff about as big as my palm of cotton candy. Then the waitress explained that this was their take on a root beer float. Now I do like a good root beer float.
I picked this up and found it was not sticky and melting in my hand like the cotton candy I have had before. This felt like real cotton. I bit into it and found a good sized ball of wonderful, high quality, homemade, vanilla bean ice cream inside. As soon bit into it the cotton candy seemed to turn into root beer in my mouth. It was not some super sugary root beer flavored syrup. No, it tasted like a small powerfully flavored shot of root beer suddenly materialized in my mouth surrounding this lovely ice cream.
It was great. I ate the whole thing in a few moments. I think I would take that over the traditional root beer float any day. It was a very cool dessert.
So go over and check out Chris's new blog and leave him a comment so he knows people stopped by. He is new to blogging and is still figuring the whole thing out. So let's give him a nice big welcome. Thanks everyone. I will be putting his site up on my sidebar so you can see when he posts.
