Business Women Awards 2019 | HONOREE
Melissa Denmark, Gracie’s
Being a professional chef in Rhode Island is unlike anywhere else, says Melissa Denmark, executive pastry chef at Gracie’s restaurant in Providence. It’s mutually supportive.
Folks look to help each other.
Along with working at Gracie’s, Denmark also started the bread and pastry program at its sister location – Ellie’s Bakery in Providence – overseeing several bakers between the two locations.
Rhode Island’s foodie community made an impression on Denmark after she and her team began using Hope & Main’s commercial kitchen in Warren in 2014. They had outgrown their space at Ellie’s, migrating to the larger kitchen part time at first, then full time.
“It’s a cool organization with food-incubator space for new or growing businesses,” said Denmark, a 2010 Johnson & Wales University grad. “We’re all like-minded … we help each other.”
Denmark loves leading classes, watching bakers grow in the industry, put their own desserts on menus and teach classes.
Her baked creations have won her awards and accolades from Edible Rhody and StarChefs magazines, and nationally from Zagat and Food & Wine, which recognized her as one of the 50 best new pastry chefs in the nation six years ago.
Bakers, Denmark said, are a unique breed when compared to chefs, with a different skill set.
“We bakers are very detail oriented, we note every nuance,” said Denmark. “Cooking is more spontaneous; the chefs I know are more into risk-taking and more loose with recipe development,” and their craft allows room for that.
The support Denmark gives to bakers she works alongside and the mutual support within the Hope & Main environment echo early support she experienced growing up.
She recalls a summer her mother made lemon meringue pie after lemon meringue pie, working to perfect the recipe.
“I kind of do that too, I obsess,” said Denmark.
Her dad pushed her to go into culinary school, telling her that if she didn’t like it, she could try something else. Denmark wasn’t thinking of baking as a career. Today, she’s grateful, doing what she loves.
Dishes she invents often have a nod to her childhood, she said: crab apple and sesame flavors, or Concord grape jam with hazelnut stemming from memories of peanut butter and jelly, for example; or her cheesecake with raisin sourdough crisp with jam, amid memories of her aunt making toasted raisin-bread with cream cheese for breakfast.
Fresh, local ingredients make a difference, said Denmark. It’s another area where she is involved, and somewhat out of her comfort zone.
Denmark and her wife started Moonrose Farm in Cranston in 2017, selling flowers and vegetables to restaurants and to community-supported agriculture members. With beekeeping, honey production is getting underway.
Owning a local farm brings Denmark full circle with the farm-to-oven-to-table process, in which customers at Ellie’s and Gracie’s benefit and find value.
“She has an amazing mind in exploring new techniques,” said Ellen Slattery, owner of Ellie’s Bakery and Gracie’s. “She is a gem in Rhode Island … and possibly all of New England.”
