Review: At Poor Hendrix, pastry chef Aaron Russell goes savory, with success
French dumplings with carrots and thyme
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CAROLINE C. KILGORE
As Restaurant Eugene’s pastry chef from November 2010 until July 2016, Aaron Russell dreamed up heady, sometimes challenging finishes to chef Linton Hopkins’s refined Southern cuisine. You might have found a bowlful of shredded barley cake embellished with neon green cucumber gel, lacy sheets of pink peppermint, and dollops of yogurt, floating like sea foam in bright red strawberry consommé.
He learned to make these kinds of extravagant desserts while working for famous fine-dining chef Günter Seeger. Russell was his assistant pastry chef at Seeger’s—until Seeger packed up for New York in 2007. Still, the skills he honed there and under his mentor, Manabu Inoue, at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead, earned Russell three James Beard nominations during his six years at Restaurant Eugene.
