Tastemaker Awards
10 best pastry chefs in Dallas score nominations in annual Tastemaker Awards
Croissant, courtesy of Lubellas Patisserie.
The celebration continues in CultureMap Dallas' 2024 Tastemaker Awards, our annual awards event honoring the best in Dallas food and drink.
Restaurant industry pros have been nominated for awards in 10 categories, with the nominees spotlighted in a special editorial series. We've already profiled candidates for Rising Star Chef, Neighborhood Restaurant, Patios, and Bars; now we've arrived at the 10 finalists for Pastry Chef of the Year, as voted by our panel of esteemed judges.
Pastry chefs are like magicians, spinning flour, sugar, and yeast into something sweet, whether it's a layer cake, cookie, brownie, or loaf of crusty bread. And Dallas' pastry scene has improved dramatically in the past few years. All 10 of our nominees boast masterful skills.
One winner will be announced at the awards ceremony on May 16 at the Fashion Industry Gallery, where we'll toast the nominees, while indulging in bites and sips. Tickets are on sale now.
These are the nominees for Pastry Chef of the Year in Dallas, in alphabetical order by first name:
Amanda Walker, It's a Cakewalk
Walker has had a meteoric rise in a relatively short time. She started It's a Cakewalk, her home-based bakery in Farmersville, as a side business to her day job in the office of the University Park Police Department. But her unique novelty cake designs were so eye-catching that she was recruited by a casting agent with Food Network to appear on a competition show called The Big Bake. Which she and her teammates went on to win. Her cakes are amazingly convincing and artistic renditions of everyday objects.
Annie Greenslade, Sweet Life
Greenslade owns and operates The Sweet Life Chef, which fills private orders for celebratory cakes, cookies, cupcakes, and more. She's a well-rounded chef with a degree in Culinary Arts but also has the skill to do Pastry Arts, as well. This award-winning chef was the winner of Texas Pastry Chef of the Year by the American Culinary Federation. She also specializes in cooking lesson parties, wedding cakes, catered desserts, private dinners, and mixology.
Clyde Greenhouse, Kessler Baking Studio
Greenhouse left the corporate world to found his Oak Cliff bakery in 2014, and by 2020, was named a semifinalist for a James Beard Award. Cookies are his mainstay - signature items include the Texas pecan shortbread cookie and the giant oatmeal cream pie cookie - but the lineup also includes blondies, brownies, plus breakfast items on Saturdays only, including cinnamon rolls, biscuits, muffins, scones, and banana bread.
Gillian Kirk, Sweet Gilly's
Dallas-area baker known for her stunning vegan cakes launched cottage bakery Sweet Gilly's Vegan in 2020, fulfilling a growing market for allergy-free, gluten-free, vegan sweets and baked goods. There are many bakers doing decorated cakes — but finding one that offers vegan and gluten-free options, especially as impeccably executed as Gilly's, is rare. She bakes cupcakes, cookies, tarts, and brownies, but her trademark is her layer cakes for weddings, parties, birthdays, and other celebrations, and she's generally booked at least a month or two in advance.
Jill Bates, Sugar & Sage Bakery
One of Dallas' most celebrated pastry chefs, Bates has worked at premier hotels and restaurants such as Fearing's, Dragonfly, Craft Dallas, and the Mansion on Turtle Creek, as well as at Cafe Momentum, the nationally recognized Dallas-based nonprofit that offers internships to at-risk youth. Now she's winning them over at Sugar & Sage, a Park Cities bakery she helped launch in 2023, with a crowd-pleasing menu of viennoiserie, cookies, cupcakes, brownies, doughnuts, breads, and baguette sandwiches.
Lizbeth Ramirez, Crown Block
After studying baking and pastry at Art Institutes, Ramirez launched her career at Wolfgang Puck Catering where she was Pastry Sous Chef for seven years. She spent a year at Eataly Dallas, moved on to Zero Gradi Gelateria and Dessert Bar in downtown Dallas, and in 2023, joined the team as head pastry chef at Crown Block, the restaurant at Reunion Tower. She's a returning nominee who was previously
nominated in 2022.
Macarena Gomez, LA 57
Gomez is a bold entrepreneur whose passion for baking took her to Paris where she studied the art of croissants; she already knew Mexican pastry, which she learned from here grandmother. She opened LA 57 in Ennis as a coffee shop selling coffee drinks plus croissants, Danish, and breakfast sandwiches, then followed that up in 2023 with a
location at the Dallas Farmers Market, where customers line up for her "supremes," the trendy croissant creation shaped like a circular "slice."
Maria Becerra, Lubellas Patisserie
Becerra has been the toast of East Dallas and beyond since 2022, when she
opened Lubellas, a bakery with her husband Ismael Trejo Gonzalez in Casa View Center, where her amazing croissants and pastry have been a blessing for the neighborhood. The bakery was the outgrowth of a cottage business she began during the pandemic, baking wedding cakes and seasonal items. She previously worked at fine-dining restaurants such as Bullion and Flora St. Cafe. She's a returning Tastemaker who was previously nominated in 2022 and again in 2023.
Sophie Candia, Ritz Carlton Las Colinas
After earning a master’s in advanced pastry and luxury desserts, this Buenos Aires native went on to work at numerous luxury hotels in vacation hotspots such as Waldorf Astoria in Scottsdale, Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, and Park Hyatt Beaver Creek in Colorado. Now she's at the newly-opened Ritz Carlton Las Colinas, overseeing desserts and bakery items for the signature dining experience LAW, its sister lounge Outlaw Taproom, and seasonal Agave Bar & Grill by the pool - everything from towering wedding cakes to hotel room amenities.
Tida Pichakron, Haute Sweets Patisserie
Pichakron started out in the corporate world, earning a degree in business administration from A&M before switching to the glamorous world of pastry. She trained at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in Napa Valley, then worked at acclaimed spots like the French Room at The Adolphus and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Las Vegas before taking the entreprenurial route with Haute Sweets Patisserie, her acclaimed bakery with two locations: East Dallas and Hillcrest Village in North Dallas. She's competed in national baking events with frequent TV appearances, and is a returning nominee, having been nominated for Tastemaker Awards in
2016 and 2017.
