That first flaky bite of a Sift Bake Shop pastry can make waiting in that long line out front worth it. But in case you needed more validation for your patience: The beloved bakery is the featured dessert option at the 20th annual Newport Mansions’ Wine & Food Festival.
The popular New England food fest begins Friday, and Connecticut is getting some representation in the stacked lineup of chefs, winemakers and eateries.
This is Sift’s second year at the fest, and chef and owner Adam Young says that’s for a reason.
“I think we have a unique kind of territory here in between the two larger cities,” Young said, referencing the proximity to New York and Boston. “A lot of really great talent in their 20s are going and working in the Michelin star world inside these cities. And it's like, after 10 years of doing that, you want something different, you know? And they're bringing their talent and that energy and that experience to more rural areas.”
Young himself has been nominated for a James Beard Award and won Food Network’s “Best Baker in America” title before going on to judge a variety of pastry competitions on the channel.
His background in resort hospitality comes through in Sift’s focus on front of house. Though the staff is wearing jeans and sneakers, the sweets emulate a Michelin-starred experience.
“We call it ‘the achievable luxury,’ kind of a tagline, an
d it's because you can come in and get some of these same products and pastries and service that someone would be able to get exclusively in a luxury property,” he said.
At the chef collaboration dinner Friday night, Sift will be serving the final course.
“We're doing a black forest [cake] for that. You know the really popular Dubai chocolate bars, right? So we've added an element of that into the black forest,” Young explained, “so it's like chocolate, pistachio, Morello cherry, creme fraiche, that sort of thing.”
Sift’s individual cakes come after the entrees, led by another name familiar to Food Network fans, Marcus Samuelsson.
The Ethiopian-Swedish chef has two Connecticut locations of his fast casual chicken joint, Streetbird, in Stamford and Fairfield. They’re located within locations of Wonder food hall, a dine-in and takeout cafeteria chain of sorts featuring a couple dozen restaurants.
