Nathaniel Reid Bakery

Our interview with Chef Nathaniel Reid was one of the most inspiring conversations we’ve had since starting this blog. We met him at his shop located on Manchester Road in Kirkwood. All of the seats were filled with happy customers, so we sat to the side in the windowsill and he was kind enough to let us chat and take some pictures of products. He’s a hometown hero, folks. We hope you enjoy this conversation with a chef we truly respect.

Tell us a little about yourself and how you got your start as a chef.

I grew up in Farmington. My dad is from North County and my mom is from Alton. I went to Mizzou, where I was a biology major. (Whitney: YOU DID?! US TOO!) Yeah! Being a biology major just wasn’t what I imaged. Back then, being in the restaurant industry didn’t seem like a great occupation or something that you really went to college for, it was more something you fell into. Mizzou did have a Hotel and Restaurant Management Program though. It seemed like a good degree, and there are a lot of business classes you take with that major.

While I was in Columbia, I worked at Chris McD’s. Chris was the first chef I ever worked for. He gave me a job, my first knife, and a great opportunity. I went from prep to fry guy to sauté guy, and they also had a fish station. One time the pastry guy got sick, so I would cover and came at 6:00am to make desserts. I made bunch of stuff by looking through cookbooks (not really knowing what I was doing), and finally got a few things to sell. That night we sold out of desserts. Maybe not because they were that great, but because they hadn’t changed out desserts in a while, it was something new (laughing). But Chris being the smart entrepreneur he is said, “come back tomorrow.” So I came back then doing desserts in the morning, then going to class, and coming back in the evenings to the fish station.

Nathaniel Reid Bakery

Near the end of my time at Mizzou, I applied for culinary school and was accepted to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Without any money, I decided to do it. When you really want to do something, you get blindsided from the reality of what it’s really going to be like, but it all worked out. I applied for every scholarship in the book! Literally, every one. 7-feet tall scholarship? Sure, give me a chance. (I’m not 7 feet tall.)

So, I went to France with nothing. I lived on a guy’s couch for a month, found a job as a private chef where I traded rent for cooking and along the way I was in cooking school, so I had food. It was epic. It was crazy. Just when there was nothing more, no money, no anything, I would win another scholarship. I had to pay for the school ahead of time and then paid my parents back. It was just blessings all the time. Just when you think something doesn’t work out, it does.

When did you start this shop in Kirkwood?

August 1, 2016.

Where were you before that?

I was at the Ritz here in St. Louis.

Is your wife involved here, too?

Yes, she’s the co-owner, we had our daughter a few days after we opened the shop so she’s been at home taking care of her. But she’s a pastry chef too!

Kouign-Amann

Why this location?

I really wanted to be in this neighborhood. It’s important to me also that we have traffic out front, and we get a lot of exposure from Manchester. I wanted a space where we could make it what we wanted. My dad and I built this whole place. I love the retail part of this place. You can see there is parking, I love the light, it just feels inviting. It’s not the most glamorous, but that’s not what we care about. To me, the exposure, the fact people can see your shop driving by is important. This feels more like a classic place we wanted to have. We picked these display cases on purpose. The modern style is the more flat, jewelry-style cases, but for me, we wanted it to be welcoming, classic, not intimidating, light, bright, like an ice cream parlor, and feel like home environment. I didn’t want it to be overly done. I want the food to be the focus. Not the chairs or the stuff around it. We sell food, not chairs. That’s why we ended up at this plaza.

Nathaniel Reid Bakery

And the reason we ended up in Kirkwood? Community. Kirkwood kind of extends into Webster, Des Peres, and Rock Hill, so it feels like one extended community. It feels like each of those communities are different, but kind of all together. Kirkwood is a very proud community. It’s neat. People are happy we’re here, they have something they’re proud of. People in St. Louis take great pride in where they’re from.

How many employees do you have at the shop?

Where do you get the inspiration for your creations?

Everywhere. Sometimes in a dream, in the shower, driving to work. I don’t listen to music in the car, but I think a lot. I’m always thinking. All the time. Not always about desserts, but about systems, quality, ingredients. When you love something, you think about it a lot; you obsess over it. If I’m trying to create something, the last thing I’m going to do is look through cookbooks for inspiration because for me, that’s somebody else. I want to have my own inspiration. The amber cake, for example: my wife and I were walking the street in New Orleans and the praline smell was just amazing. They’re too sweet, but I wanted to capture that essence in a cake. So I worked on it for months, trying to capture my sense at that time, and trying to put it in a product so other people can have that experience.

Amber: buttery shortbread, salted caramel mousse, pecan caramel

Or, maybe I’ll taste an ingredient and have some inspiration, like with our bestselling jam: strawberry poppy flower jam. I was working with poppy flower and thinking how great it would be with strawberry and I would never have guessed it, but it’s our best seller.

Just going through life! Seeing a texture in the parking lot, something is growing, or you see a tree, something that’s visually inspirational and you make it a chocolate decoration that tries to emulate that experience. I just feel like life is inspiring enough. I don’t have to listen to jazz music or put myself in a certain place to be inspired. Just going through life is enough exposure of inspiration. It’s weird how it happens and sometimes it’s a flurry where you just can’t write fast enough. Other times, you try to push yourself into it. When it just happens naturally is best than trying to push yourself into it. Also some of the inspiration comes from more practical things like holidays.

Nathaniel Reid Jams

How often to you change out products or add new things?

I write a menu every month for the next month and change some things out. We have core products that don’t get changed out, like our turkey sandwich. (laughs) I might not be welcome back here if I took that away. The chocolate almond croissants, etc are staples. We do rotate things like the fruit danishes, and a lot of it is seasonality. We have the blueberry and apricot pastries right now, and next we’ll have a lemon brioche feuilletée. It’s like taking brioche and laminating it, which is awesome and completely different than croissant or danish. The texture is like cotton candy. I don’t know that anyone is St. Louis has ever done a brioche feuilletée, it’s something that’s very different. So yes, every month those rotating products get changed out and then we also add holiday products.

Camille: lemon cream mousse, almond pain de génes, raspberries

So the sandwiches are on really good bread, but you can’t buy baguettes here. Why not?

(Pointing at the store front sign NATHANIEL REID BAKERY) We are a “bakery” by name. I felt like that was the best word to say what we are, but it’s a hybrid bakery, pastry shop, confectionary, chocolate shop, and… we have lunch! So it’s a blend of many things under one roof. I’m not interested in selling loaves and there are a lot of people that do that in town. For me, I like to make all my products. We make the bread for the sandwiches, and three days out I will estimate how many Italian rolls we’ll need, so if we have extra we sell the rolls. I’m out of space to display space for bread, too!

Speaking of space, do you think you’ll expand?

I think someday we’ll have to. I don’t know when that will be, but the demand is just too much for what this space holds. I’m very conservative in what we do and I’m going to make sure it’s the right step before doing it. This is my retirement plan! It’s not a get rich quick scheme, it’s a commitment to the community, developing those relationships and growing them. I’d rather go slow and know we have time to do what we want to do and do it the right way, not sacrifice in order to make a quick jump, grow too fast, and not have the support to carry the torch in the right direction. Multiple customers ask me this same question everyday, but the concept is what it is at this time. It will evolve over time but for now, we’re going to stick to customer service and the experience.

Nathaniel Reid Bakery

Do you cook at home?

I do! Cooking is a hobby of mine. (laughing) It’s funny how you can have the same hobby as your work but I love cooking! I can’t do everything that I like to cook here at the shop, so it’s fun to cook things at home.

What do you like to make at home?

Oh, all sorts of stuff. I like making pâtés and curing meats. I love making chocolates and ice cream. That’s something I really like doing but we just can’t at the shop right now. There’s just no more display space! I’m sure down the road you’ll get to see those things. There are some things that I like to do and I feel that I’m very good at that just aren’t in the cards right now for this space.

Does your wife like to cook, too?

Oh yes. She’s a pastry chef too, and has been for 16 years! She loves to cook at home.

Macarons

Do you like to go out to eat in St. Louis?

Yes! I don’t too often because our daughter is still young, but we like going to BBQ places. Pappy’s is one of our favorites. We also really like Olio. When I go out to eat, I like to eat food I don’t normally cook, and the upgraded Mediterranean food Ben (Poremba) is doing is so good. Gioia’s is also great; it’s one of those places between causal and nice. More places I go are casual. I also really want to try Balkan Treat Box! I do appreciate fine dining, and there aren’t a lot of fine dining places in St. Louis, but I opened and worked at a three Michelin star restaurant for years, I’m familiar with that environment. Sometimes you just want to have a more casual experience. Usually when I go out of town for work I go to fine dining places. Restaurants that serve ethnic foods that I don’t cook are always fun.

What’s something you’ve made that was a great idea but was a failure? Something you’d never do again?

I try to forget those, but I have done that. In my early days I messed up everything, but the older I get, the less often I find myself with those experiences. One of the best things I ever did was working in a kitchen before I went to culinary school. I wasn’t a blank canvas without a frame a reference, and it made culinary school a lot better having experience.

There have been some bad things and I’m sure my wife would tell me all of them. (laughing) Sometimes you start with something really terrible and you can turn it into something really great because you can read between the lines of what’s happening. For example, I was experimenting with a new cake that I’m doing with yogurt, grapefruit and passion fruit and you try it the first time and it might not be that good but you know two to three more times of adjusting things and it’s going to be awesome. You learn from your failures, right? You understand them.

So many chefs say you need to eat good food. Yes, you need to eat good food, but you also should eat bad food sometimes because it makes you understand more about food and what you should or should not do. You have to try things and understand why something is terrible.

I made a banana grapefruit jam and it wasn’t right- I didn’t blanch it enough and the grapefruit was just so overly bitter. A couple jars in the trash, you know? We do a LOT of product testing before I put something out. I taste it, explore it, define and redefine the product until it’s what I want it to be. The goal is always better quality.

Sambava: chocolate mousse, vanilla bean crème brulée, crispy hazelnut praline

Do you have any hobbies besides cooking?

I like to do anything outdoors. Going to parks, the St. Louis Zoo, and taking advantage of all the cool stuff we have here in St. Louis: The Butterfly House, Science Center, etc. Fishing, hiking, collecting different things.

Within the last two years my wife and I built this place, opened it, had a baby, and it’s just gone by so fast. Our daughter will be two soon, and she’s a lot of fun. Any free time I have, I’m with my family. Family first.

On a normal day I work 7am-7pm, but it just depends on the day. Sometimes I’m here late working on new ideas. Stuff happens too and sometimes I need to work late. Around Christmas I work 90+ hours, 7 days a week, all day. I always do what it takes to make it right; it’s dedication.

Nathaniel Reid

My favorite part is just seeing people happy. Some of our products are different, and you don’t see them other places in St. Louis. For example, when we opened I had to decide if I would call it kouign-amann, you know? The biggest thing for me is seeing people happy, coming in and saying “Oh! I had these when I was in France!” It’s just cool to see. Some people say, “I’ll take the hockey puck!” in reference to the kouign-amann. Nobody here is going to correct them with French accent. We all just love food! We have a team and a kitchen that loves food and it’s cool to share that with the customers. It’s neat to see how well received my products are. When you love something so much, you want other people to love it too, and when they do, it’s a great experience.

Nathaniel Reid Bakery : 11243 Manchester Road / St. Louis, MO 63122 / Monday-Friday 7:00AM-6:00PM / Saturday 7:00AM-5:00PM