Casandra Perez-Martinez
Comedor | Austin
NOVEMBER 2023
Even though she worked a full-time job and raised five children, Casandra Perez-Martinez’s mom always had breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert on the table. Perez-Martinez was inspired by this, and after a few fast food gigs in high school, decided to enroll in culinary school in 2015. She graduated from the second-to-last class of Austin’s Le Cordon Bleu, moved back to her hometown of Elgin, Texas, and found work at Brique as head baker. Perez-Martinez then bounced around Elgin, hopping on the line at a local restaurant. In 2018, looking for bigger opportunities, Perez-Martinez took up a job on the pastry team at Rising Stars alum Philip Speer’s Bonhomie.
Perez-Martinez learned from Speer and from the restaurant’s pastry chef about composition, focusing on how to make a dessert greater than the sum of its parts. For a Mother’s Day event, she developed her first plated dessert as a tribute to her mom: chiffon cake with an Italian meringue buttercream and berries, a “not-too-sweet, dainty cake with fresh fruit; her favorite.” Perez-Martinez moved on to the Emmer & Rye group, working with Rising Stars alum Tavel Bristol-Joseph on the company’s retail program, and eventually moving over to Hestia. Looking for more creative input, Perez-Martinez joined the team at Speer’s Comedor in October 2022, where she quickly felt a strong sense of connection with the flavors, textures, and techniques, conceptualizing desserts like her pavlova with tepache sorbet, coconut espuma, raspberry-pasilla gel, and mint oil.
