Parisian brings classic pastries to 1789

Walk down the last block of 36th Street NW before it reaches Prospect Street early in the morning and peer into the big, glass window overlooking the sidewalk a few doors from 1789 Restaurant’s entrance. You’ll probably see Fabrice Bendano kneading enormous
amounts of dough or working on desserts.

The French pastry chef who has been with 1789 since March makes 38 loaves a day for the Georgetown restaurant and 15 cheesecakes for the Old Ebbitt Grill and Clyde’s of Tysons Corner (owned, like 1789, by Clyde’s Restaurant Group).
That’s before he has even begun creating the pastries and desserts destined for 1789, with names like Chaud-Froid Pineapple, Raspberry Napoleon and Golden Chocolate Dome.

Born in Paris, Bendano has always been around food. “My parents used to have a restaurant in Paris nd also a hotel restaurant in Cannes. I have always been in this environment.” He began his own career at 16, at the Hilton hotel in Cannes.

“In the beginning, I wanted to be a chef. But I went one month for training in a bakery and I fell in ove with pastries.” He throws his head back, closes his eyes and takes a long sniff. “Aah, the smell! The reativity!”

In 1992, he earned his C.A.P. de Patisserie, the vocational certificate
necessary to practice his skill in France and the result of a two-year course. Drafted next into the French military, he was directed to the officers dining room at Draguignan barracks to make their desserts.

Eventually released to pursue his career, he worked at La Bella Otero at the top of the
InterContinental Carlton Cannes before deciding to move to Paris. There he progressed to the internationally renowned Taillevent, which he described as, “very intense, very stressful. I start at 7:30, don’t leave till midnight,” he says in his seductive French burr.

There was even more stress under Alain Ducasse at Le Louis XV in Monaco, a Michelin threestar restaurant. He, too, was “very intense, very precise on quality — and time and creation. He is the one who checked what we create.”

He found it not much different from working for a corporate chef, so he took himself off to London, where a friend had found him a job as a kosher pastry chef. Bendano marvels at the regulations.

“Butter is not allowed, only margarine. No milk from the cow. No cream, just palm cream. The only way to use it, you have to add one-third water. The rabbi used to come over in the morning to switch on the oven. We had to adapt recipes. No white chocolate. You can use a substitute made of rice, but it doesn’t taste that well. There is a big difference” — Bendano’s eyes stretch wide in emphasis — “between cow and vegetable. But it gives me a knowledge if I have to do kosher catering.”

Then followed a position at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park hotel in London. When it closed for a year for renovation, a friend put him in touch with the chef at Washington’s Les Halles. So in 1999, he found himself in the U.S. capital.

Next came a stint with fellow Frenchman Michel Richard at Citronelle, an interesting and valuable experience, Bendano says. “You work with different pastry chefs, you are given different techniques. When you become a pastry chef, from these techniques you combine and create your own technique. The first time you make something, with every step you create a different way to work, different habits.”

But both Frenchmen had the same approach to their work. “I like to be in charge. He also likes to be in charge,” says Bendano. So with his craft now finely honed, he moved on to 1789 Restaurant, where he is in charge of a team of six creating desserts and pastries. He acknowledges himself as a taskmaster.

“I am kind of strict. I say, ‘This is the way I want, this is the way it is going to be unless you can show me better.’”

He likes to create contemporary desserts — but not so deconstructed that their origins are lost, in the new way of molecular gastronomy. “That’s not me. I like to take a good classic dessert and modernize it, make your own signature — that is me.”

His Raspberry Napoleon is a case in point. “One day I receive some kaffir lime leaves by mistake. I smell. I like the smell. I think I simply try. Right now the Raspberry Napoleon is served with a kaffir lime leaf sorbet with hibiscus essence on top of it. My
Chocolate Truffle is based on the classic dessert. But I just add a touch of almond dacquoise for some chocolate drama.” The Chaud-Froid Pineapple is the fruit served in a variety of ways and a variety of temperatures, “hot plus cold plus frozen.”

So when he’s at home in Arlington with his American wife, who is a human resources
manager, does he bake? “When I’m there, I cook many meals. That is something I take time for and enjoy. But I don’t bake.” He looks aghast at the suggestion. “I will never bake at home!”

1789 Restaurant (202-965-789; http://www.1789restaurant.com) is ocated at 1226 36th St. NW.
Main courses cost $26 to $38. Desserts cost $9.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the NorthWest Current newspaper. Photo Bill Petros/The Current.

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