If they make it through to the dessert course, patrons at Ici Urban Bistro — the ritzy restaurant within Sofitel hotel — find themselves pampered and spoiled, offered sweet, gooey temptations that are too delicious to pass up.
The mastermind of all these sugar-wrapped calories is pastry chef Beverly Bates, a native New Yorker who has spent more time whipping up eggs, butter, sugar and heavy cream than doing just about anything else.
As comforting and cheery as a mug of hot cocoa, Bates springs from a large family of eight children, and as the second-to-oldest, she learned to cook at an early age. Her indoctrination was literally a trial by fire.
“My family even had a wood-burning stove,” she says. “I learned to cook on it. I cooked a complete Thanksgiving dinner in that oven.”
Blessed with a big dose of common sense — “I learn from my mistakes,” she says — and a rugged sense of independence, Bates decided to enroll in a community college for a general hospitality degree, taking all the culinary courses the school offered. Afterwards, she applied for a job with an upstate pastry shop, and was hired on in a kitchen-prep position under chef Floyd Misek, who became her first culinary mentor.
“He taught me the culture of the kitchen, the beauty of a sharp knife, of crisp puff pastry, of a creamy bisque and the elegance of French cooking,” she says.
From there, Bates moved on to the big leagues, enrolling in the Culinary Institute of America, specializing in pastry and working on weekends with a caterer in the Catskills.
“I became really aggressive with my education,” she says. “I saw fine chefs, and that’s who I wanted to be.”
What she took away from those years was a heightened awareness of how to work with hazelnuts and chocolate, butter and heavy cream, with excellent results, readying her for her big move to London, where she worked under famed tempestuous chef Gordon Ramsay for eight months.
“I am an Anglophile and a history geek,” she says, “and my political and historical nerdiness played into this move.”
Moving back to the United States, Bates landed a job in Baltimore with Joseph Poupon at his Patisserie Poupon (Note: there is a sister store in Georgetown), where for a year, she remembers, she marveled at his walk-in refrigerator, filled fresh daily with butter, milk, eggs, heavy cream and strawberries. It was an intense training, where she learned how to make everything fresh from scratch every day, she says.
Finally, Bates moved to Washington, where she has baked for both Michel Richard at Citronelle and Jeffrey Buben at Bistro Bis. Offered the pastry chef’s job at Ici Urban Bistro, Bates happily accepted, saying “I knew this is a good fit. They are very passionate about food.”
And what do members of her large family think?
“They are really excited for me,” she says, “but they don’t like to cook with me anymore because I’ve been professionally trained.”
If you go
Ici Urban Bistro
Sofitel Lafayette Square
806 15th St. NW
202-730-8700
Hours: 6:30 to 10 a.m., 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., 6 to 10 p.m. Monday-Friday; 7 to 11 a.m., 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday-Sunday
Q&A with Chef Bates
Do you cook at home?
Not so much, but if I am having friends over I will do brunch.
What is your comfort food?
Scrambled eggs or omelets with spinach, chives, mushrooms. Eggs and toast with real butter. I always have fresh eggs in the kitchen.
What defines your baking style?
It’s “scratch” baking with noble ingredients. I grew up in New York state where all the women bake, and it’s always from scratch.
What’s in your fridge?
Fresh eggs, fresh butter, salad stuff, whole wheat bread loaf, coffee, veggies and apples.
Which is your favorite cuisine?
French. It’s French.
From the Chef’s Kitchen
Sour Cream and Cherry Coffee Cake
This cake is actually better the next day and can be frozen for a month or held at room temperature for 3 days. Serve at room temperature or warm with lightly sweetened whipped cream or eat at midnight over the sink in your pajamas. You can use cherries or any other stone fruit, preferably in season and fresh, though in a pinch you may use frozen cherries.
Serves about 6
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch salt
8 oz. (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup (8 oz.) sour cream
1 cup pitted fresh cherries, cut in half
Topping:
1 cup whole walnuts
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spray or grease a 10-inch loaf pan or an 8-inch round cake pan.
Sift together the dry ingredients. Cream together the butter and brown sugar till light, fluffy and pale in color. Beat in the eggs till fluffy. Sift the dry ingredients on top of the butter-egg mixture, and fold in the sour cream by hand till just smooth; do not over mix.
To make the topping, grind the topping ingredients together in a food processor till walnuts are in small pieces.
Divide the batter in half. Spread half of the batter in the bottom of the prepared baking pan. Sprinkle all the cherries on the batter evenly. Sprinkle half the topping on the first layer of batter and fruit. Drop the remaining batter by spoonfuls on the cinnamon topping and spread them together with a cake spatula till they cover the entire bottom layer off topping. Sprinkle the remaining cinnamon topping on top of the cake.
Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely before cutting.
