Analyzing the Counter at Pichet Ong’s BakeryNext door to his sleek dessert bar P*ONG, pastry chef Pichet Ong has opened a small, sunlit bakery called Batch. The treats here — little cupcakes, chewy cookies, and cupped puddings — are far more familiar. But the tastes may not be.
An Interactive Tour of the Country’s Greenest Food BusinessMaury Rubin has more on his mind than pretzel croissants. The chef-owner of bi-coastal branches of the City Bakery has become consumed of late with food miles, volatile organic compounds, and wax-lined coffee cups, those pernicious symbols of our disposable (but non-biodegradable) society. He has just opened the second outpost of Birdbath (code name: Sparrow), his pastry-shop side project that originated as a way to generate cash flow out of the front of his East Village commercial kitchen and has become, according to Rubin, “the greenest food business in the country.”
