The Super Fun Idea Book
At Chicago's Girl & the Goat, Pastry Chef Nate Meads figured out how to harness young cooks’ energy and zany ideas.
In an era of unparalleled connectivity among chefs, the team at Stephanie Izard’s restaurants shares inspiration the old-fashioned way—with a small communal notebook dubbed the “Super Fun Idea Book.” Introduced by Pastry Chef Nate Meads, the staff is encouraged to pen ideas, no matter how bad they may seem. “I have young cooks, but my ideas are not very young,” says Meads, who came up the Chicago pastry ranks at Everest and Tru. “At this point, I’m not creating new things, and I’m OK with that. My job is to push us forward.” Meads looks to his millennial cooks to keep creativity flowing and build a menu where everyone’s voice is heard, even the “craziest, nuttiest ideas with off-the-wall zany flavor combinations.”
An impassioned entry from Pastry Cook Annette Nowacki became a dessert of malted ganache, malt ice cream, and popcorn cream with Ducasse techniques laced in. Meads’ own “Lemon Make You Happy” dessert was also born of the book: “Goat cheese and sorrel are bangin’, and we all know that,” wrote Cook Cecila Iwata. The menu-ready version takes the form of lemon pound cake with cheesecake sauce and sorrel ice cream. And it is, indeed, “bangin’.”
