Dessert
How One Chef Makes Infinite (Yes, Infinite) Desserts Every Night
“The idea is to never say no.”
Every night at Valhalla, a restaurant with a $188 tasting menu located on the mezzanine of a crowded food hall in Chicago’s West Loop, Tatum Sinclair prepares infinite desserts. Infinite as in unlimited—all you can eat—desserts.
Unlike the breadsticks at Olive Garden, Tatum’s desserts are curated and customized to each diner’s preference. In theory, the concept is simple: Tatum will make you as many desserts as you’d like, so long as you finish what’s in front of you. The execution is more complex, as she preps, makes, and plates each dessert—which includes sorbets, ice creams, cakes, pavlovas, and something she describes as “the center of a cinnamon bun”—entirely by herself.
“I don’t think you need all this experience to pull off what I’m doing,” Tatum told me. “You just have to be organized and really fast.”
Speed and organization are especially important at Valhalla these days, too, as interest in the restaurant’s infinite dessert offering—which is exclusive to its tasting menu—recently peaked following the publication of a TikTok highlighting Tatum’s work. Since being shared on August 16th, the video has received more than a million views.
“Thirty to 40 percent of people are coming in from seeing the TikTok,” Tatum said, “We used to do a 50/50 split—in terms of tasting menu and a la carte—now it’s 80 percent tasting menu.”
While virality attracted new diners and expectedly increased the kitchen’s workload, the new wave of TikTok-influenced patrons initially presented their own set of challenges. “We got people that were younger—inexperienced diners that don’t know how a tasting menu works,” said Tatum. “They fly through it. They don’t want to do any add-ons. They just want to come and eat as many desserts as possible.”
Per Tatum, the TikTok, which was made by Jacob Potashnick—a well-traveled chef who will soon open his own tasting menu restaurant in Chicago’s Ukranian Village—misled its viewers and resulted in at least one bad review. “He essentially was saying we had 40 different options—or 40 different bites. That’s just not true. I don’t have forty. I’ve never had that.”
Instead, Tatum has roughly 20 different dessert templates (an ever changing lineup of confections, pastries, crumbles, etc.), most of them consisting of anywhere from three to ten customizable components. Prior to beginning their dessert course, Tatum requests that diners inform her of two things: When they’re ready for their last bite and what flavor profile they’d like it to be. “If someone asks to finish with something fruity, I’ll ask if they want citrus, tropical, non-seasonal, or seasonal fruit. I have all those on hand,” she said, “The idea is to never say no.”
While some of her items will repurpose components of desserts from the a la carte menu, others are unique to the infinite offering. “Having liquid nitrogen, I can pretty much make an ice cream base within 10 minutes,” she said. “If a guest wants something super specific—say someone asks for horseradish ice cream—I can make it.”
While making that horseradish ice cream, Tatum must also execute her more technically demanding and time-consuming a la carte desserts, like black marble pavlova and pineapple “seven ways.” And before preparing any of her infinite desserts, she’s responsible for planning the dessert programs at Valhalla’s sister restaurants, S.K.Y. and Apolonia.
When naming her dessert concept, Tatum was inspired by the galactic look of her black marble pavlova. “It looks like a planet,” she said, “and the infinity stemmed from that.” If planet-like dessert doesn’t immediately appeal to you, that’s the point. “I’m not like the traditional pastry shop where the aesthetic is pretty,” Tatum shared, “I want someone to say, ‘That’s so weird,’ or ‘That’s so cool.’” Good news: Infinite desserts are both.
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