The New York Occasions has as soon as once more shined its highlight on Austin’s culinary scene. It included Comadre Panadería, an Austin bakery by San Antonio native Mariela Camacho, on its new checklist of the 22 of the Greatest Bakeries Throughout the U.S. Proper Now.
Interim meals critic Priya Krishna praises pastry chef Camacho’s pastries that embody conchas and her signature pink cake. “Regardless of their saccharine appearances, not one of many desserts is overly cloying, and even the espresso drinks (Texas pecan horchata! Cranberry vanilla agua fresca!) strike the playful tone of the pastries,” she writes.
Comadre Panadería has been well known, together with by this publication; Camacho, who’s now primarily based in Austin, received Pastry Chef of the 12 months within the 2023 CultureMap Austin Tastemaker Awards. She additionally earned a 2024 James Beard Award semifinalist nomination for Excellent Pastry Chef or Baker.
Camacho and Comadre as an entire are each invested in utilizing baked items to make a extra equitable world, from the bakery’s early days as a fundraiser for catastrophe reduction, to a present insistence on charging sufficient to assist moral and natural meals, and paying workers sufficient to maintain up with rising prices in Austin.
Though Camacho was born in San Antonio and began her baking profession there, she additionally spent a big time in Seattle, Washington, the place Comadre began as a pop-up. Based on Austin Month-to-month, she then moved again to San Antonio, after which to Austin. However regardless of the place she is, the Mexican cooking traditions of her ancestors take precedent.
Mariela Camacho, Comadre Panaderia.
Courtesy picture
The Occasions additionally acknowledged Houston’s Koffeteria. Krishna hails the bakery for pastry chef-owner Vanarin Kuch’s inventive fare that features dishes comparable to beef pho kolaches, Chinese language sausage breakfast tacos, and butter mochi.
“A few of Mr. Kuch’s choices are rooted in his Cambodian American id — he makes cornbread with the coconutty, scallion-forward flavors of Cambodian road corn — whereas others are odes to Houston’s multicultural make-up. However a lot of the enjoyable of Koffeteria is having no thought what Mr. Kuch will do subsequent, and eagerly awaiting his subsequent innovation,” Krishna writes.
Open since 2019, Koffeteria has been driving excessive this 12 months. It earned a James Beard Award semifinalist nomination for Excellent Bakery and a CultureMap Houston Tastemaker Award for Pastry Chef of the 12 months.
Comadre Panadería and Koffeteria are the one Texas institutions to make the Occasions’ checklist. Solely California and New York Metropolis, which every have three representatives, earn extra recognition.
