The Fruits of Her Success

Pastry Chef Joy Jessup Sweetens Besh Restaurant Group

 Joy Jessup has ivory skin, sparkling dark eyes, smooth black hair and a strong will that reflects her Basque heritage—a region between France and Spain from which her grandparents emigrated. When they settled in southern California, her grandparents planted a successful fruit farm, and Joy grew up surrounded by orchards. “One of the reasons I love pastry is because so much fruit is involved,” says Joy, who recently joined the Besh Restaurant Group to direct the pastry programs of all four restaurants: August, Besh Steak, Lüke, and La Provence. A seasonal favorite is her Basque Torte with Summer Peaches infused with vanilla bean and lime zest, revealing both her passion for local, seasonal fruit and her inventive approach to pastry. Soon to be a signature item on the dessert menu at August is her Chocolate Ménage à Trois, featuring white, milk, and dark chocolate with complementing spices to enhance the flavors of each.   

Joy never intended to become a pastry chef. Although she knew she wanted to cook professionally by the time she graduated from high school, her father discouraged her.  But cooking was her passion and her therapy after her mother died when Joy was thirteen. “When I was growing up in a large, extended family, we’d have huge dinners every night for ten to fifteen people,” she remembers. “When my mother died, I took over the kitchen, and even though we had never cooked together, I could cook anything she had made.” 

On her father’s advice, Joy entered college studying nutrition, but soon after, she applied for a student loan and entered the California Culinary Institute in San Francisco. Her experience cooking for her father, three brothers, and two sisters gave her the confidence she needed to succeed in the world of fast-paced haute-cuisine. Joy’s first professional experience began when she applied for a job, straight out of culinary school, with Roland Passot of San Francisco’s La Folie. “I told him I’d take the first opening available, but when he called to offer me the pastry job, I said, ‘Pastry?’” Once there, Joy learned the art of French desserts from a young French emigré descended from a line of pastry chefs. 

Working at La Folie, Joy met another mentor, Sylvan Leroy, the corporate pastry chef of Valrhona chocolates. “I kept thinking I would leave pastry, but I met all these wonderful teachers who kept bringing me back,” she says. Next came an invitation from Sean Eastwood and Laurence Jossel to help open Kokkari, a contemporary Greek restaurant in San Francisco. “Greek food! I guess I could learn Greek food,” thought Joy, whose experience at Kokkari and its sister restaurant Evvia proved an essential step in her education. Creating modern spins on traditional Greek dessert techniques and ingredients, such as tangerine granité paired with yogurt sorbet, Joy learned to translate her classic French training into innovative, contemporary preparations.  

While in her twenties, Joy was invited by Tom Gumpel, then the director of the pastry program at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, to teach. While there, Joy befriended Steven Durphy, pastry chef at the nearby French Laundry restaurant with whom she co-taught workshops. After a year of teaching, Joy was ready to get back into the kitchen, so she leapt at the opportunity when Tom recommended her for the pastry chef position at the five-star Windsor Court hotel in New Orleans.

The fact that she would be working with René Bajeux, New Orleans’ most respected French chef, convinced Joy to make the move. When René left two months later to start his own restaurants, René Bistro and La Côte, Joy was naturally disappointed. But soon after, she rejoined René as the pastry chef for both restaurants, where she worked side-by-side with her husband, Matt Floyd, the executive sous-chef. 

Joy eventually moved back to California with Matt, leaving behind the fast-paced restaurant world to raise her young daughter, Charis. She went back to school and became certified in food science and technology.  She also found time to ghost-write a pastry textbook.  But when she got wind that John Besh was looking for a pastry chef, her family made the decision to return to New Orleans. In addition to the pleasure of working with John, a chef she has always admired, Joy is excited to be shaping the entire pastry program. For now, though, her main focus is designing dessert menus for four restaurants with entirely different styles. “I don’t believe everything takes a strict formula,” explains Joy. “You can create some really amazing pastry by throwing things together without a recipe, as long as you know what you’re doing and have imagination.”  

This approach, combined with her genius for contemporary spins on traditional ingredients and recipes, is already spelling sweet success at Lüke, the first Besh restaurant to receive Joy’s attentions. “Everybody who comes to New Orleans is looking for Bananas Foster,” she says. “Since Lüke is a French-style brasserie, diners are also expecting profiteroles.” To satisfy both cravings, Joy created banana cream-filled profiteroles topped with praline-toffee sauce. Joy’s skill at creating desserts with balanced flavors and delightful textures shines through in this recipe, where the choux pastry and mild filling contrast with the sweet, caramel-based sauce. Playing off the German influence of Lüke’s Alsatian-inspired menu, Joy also created an inspired interpretation of Black Forest cake. “I did a chocolate pot-de-crème with chocolate cherry cake on the inside, and whipped cream and chocolate shavings on top,” she explains. 

Joy suspects that her heritage may have something to do with her success. “The Basque culture is an intermingled culture—French and Spanish,” says Joy, who catered her own wedding with a Basque style picnic. “Maybe that’s why I’m so comfortable mixing things up a bit in the kitchen.” Being a third-generation American from a family that always embraced hard work may also play a role in this chef’s rapid climb to success. Although her father died several years ago, Joy is happy that he lived to see her succeed in her chosen field. “My dad was a dentist, and one day a client came into his office carrying a copy of Bon Appétit with an article about me,” she recounts. “He was so excited after that, it totally transformed his attitude about what I did. He lived to see my wedding and learn that I was expecting my first child. He got to see it all.”

---