ABQ Journal: Where Desserts are ‘a total work of art’
The German term “Gesamtkunstwerk” describes a creative result where different art forms – and, often, portions of the artist’s psyche itself – are combined to create a “total work of art.”
Santa Fe’s best approximation of the edible Gesamtkunstwerk happens five nights a week atop a 24-by-48-inch Boos block in the kitchen at Paloma. In that cramped corner, Paloma’s executive pastry chef Jessica Brewer, 29, is turning out the most inventive, seasonal and addictive desserts in the state.
“You get the sweet, you get the crunch, the salt. The texture, acidity, sourness, creaminess. All of these things matter,” says Brewer, describing her culinary worldview. The Clark Kent-bespectacled, sleeve-tattooed, self-professed heavy-metalhead, video-game fanatic and science nerd is a third-generation chef and proud graduate of the Santa Fe Community College Culinary Arts program. To eat her desserts – whether they’re weekly specials derived from the wild recesses of her obsessive brain, or the three stalwarts on the permanent Paloma menu – is to experience as many sensations as possible.