Elizabeth Falkner

Elizabeth Falkner

Elizabeth Falkner (middle) and Scharffen Berger
Cooking style	Pastries, Cakes, and California
Education	San Francisco Art Institute
Current restaurant(s) Citizen Cake (San Francisco)

Elizabeth Falkner is the executive pastry chef and owner of Citizen Cake and executive chef and co-owner of Orson, both restaurants located in San Francisco, California, U.S..

Biography

Chef Falkner graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1989 with a BFA in fine arts. She began her career in 1990 as the chef at Cafe Claude, before moving to Masa's with Chef Julian Serrano. In 1993, Falkner became the pastry chef at Elka in the Miyako Hotel, and in 1994 Falkner was hand-picked by Chef Traci Des Jardins to head the pastry division at Drew Nieporent's Rubicon.

In 1997, Falkner opened Citizen Cake at its first location in the South of Market district of San Francisco. It remained there until 2000 when she moved the restaurant to 399 Grove Street, in the Hayes Valley district. From 2001 to 2002, Falkner taught professional pastry courses in Japan; and, from 2002 to 2003, she was a consultant on pasta for Barilla in Parma, Italy. In 2005, she began to expand her role at Citizen Cake from pastries into the lunch and dinner menus.

In 2006, Falkner appeared as a guest judge on Top Chef, a reality show on the Bravo network. She has also appeared on Iron Chef America, Tyler's Ultimate, $40 a Day, Sugar Rush, Best Of, Bay Cafe, Top Chef-Pastry and others. She has cooked at the James Beard House in New York, the Masters of Food and Wine in Carmel, CA, and the Chef's Holiday at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. In 2010, Falkner relocated Citizen Cake to 2125 Fillmore Street, and was rumored to be planning to launch a weekend brunch service at her other restaurant Orson. She is the runner-up of the fourth season of The Next Iron Chef, losing in the finale to Geoffrey Zakarian.

Cakes

Citizen Cake, and Falkner in particular, are known for their original and creative cake designs. As Star Chefs describes her cakes:

Three-dimensional cakes, off-center cakes, cakes with sugar shards jutting from them, a caramelized sugar teeter-totter balancing equal rounds of fruit sorbet and crème fraîche. Cakes shaped like the Guggenheim Museum. Avant-garde pastry. Dessert artist Elizabeth Falkner takes these artistically inspired visions dancing in her head and transforms them into culinary delights. "It is not my tendency to make anything round," she says, and her cakes are anything but. Topped with her signature explosion of sugar spirals, pulled sugar ribbons and fruit tuiles, Elizabeth Falkner’s dessert creations have become the talk of the pastry world. [1]

She was commissioned to make a cake for the California Museum of Art, as well as a cake for Sharon Stone's birthday. She often makes cakes that seem to defy gravity and uses unique ingredients such as pepper, anise, passion fruit, pears, and kumquats. Her desserts have equally unique names such as "A Chocolate Work Orange," "Get Ready Cake," "After Midnight Chocolate Cake," "Bleeding Heart," and "Tropical Shag."

Falkner is also known for her sugar art. From Star Chefs:

She uses an ultrafine baker’s sugar to create her signature pulled sugar ribbons, roses, cages, spirals and tuiles. Stalactites of sugar, teetering sugar shards, sweet hard and soft meringues. Glistening, colorful--they make you stop and look and gaze with awe before taking that first bite. [2]

Awards

• "Rising Star Chef" (1995) by the San Francisco Chronicle
• "Pastry Chef of the Year" (1999) by San Francisco Magazine
• "Golden Bowl" for "Best Pastry Chef" (2003) by Women Chefs and Restaurateurs
• "Golden Bowl" for "Women Who Inspire" (2003) by Women Chefs and Restaurateurs
• "10 Women With Substance and Style" (2004) by Organic Style Magazine
• "Best Pastry Chef" nominee (2005) by the James Beard Foundation
• "Charles M. Holmes Award" (2005) by the Human Rights Campaign

Books

• Elizabeth Falkner's Demolition Desserts: Recipes from Citizen Cake (2007) Ten Speed Press, photography by Frankie Frankeny

External links

• Citizen Cake
• Article in Gourmet Magazine
• Biography at Star Chefs
• Article at MetroActive Dining