By Alison Bailin Batz / Photo by Debby Wolvos
Crystal Kass, a 2024 James Beard Award nominee for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker, leads the all-day pastry and evening dessert program at Valentine, where she is focused on elegant, modern sweets infused with Southwestern ingredients and flair.
What are some pastries and desserts at Valentine for which you are best known?
I am enamored with the art and science of lamination, which is the process used to make croissants. We always have a rotating croissant well worth trying, most recently filled with everything from mulberry jam and strawberries, to guava and cream. Our guest-favorite dessert is the churro croissant roll, but I am also partial to our Basque cheesecake and ice creams, especially recent flavors including corn and chocolate-jalapeno.
What inspired you to bake?
It is perfect that this is coming out in May, because I came to love baking – especially banana bread and chocolate chip cookies – by doing it with my mom when I was a child in my native Illinois. And while after high school I initially studied kinesiology, my happy place was always in the kitchen, so much so that I would eventually leave college to enroll in the French Pastry School in Chicago in 2012. It was the best decision I ever made.
How did you make your way to Valentine?
After graduating pastry school, I whet my teeth in professional kitchens in Chicago, notably Vanille Patisserie and Lovely Too: A Bakeshop, before doing what all Midwesterners do at some point: decide to move to the Valley. I moved to Arizona in 2014 and worked my way up at JW Marriott Camelback Inn Resort & Spa, Phoenix Public Market, Sweet Dee’s Bakeshop, and Persepshen before joining Valentine in 2021. I was named lead pastry chef in 2022.
What is something readers would be surprised to know about you?
I am an 80/20 vegetarian, meaning I am a vegetarian 80% of the time. However, I give myself grace 20% of the time, especially when chef Donald Hawk – our visionary at Valentine – has a nonvegetarian dish for me to sample.
Valentine, 4130 N. 7th Ave., Phoenix; 602.612.2961; www.valentinephx.com.