photo by ALICE LIU
Jennifer Yee is an award-winning and James Beard recognized pastry chef based in Atlanta, Georgia. Yee serves as Executive Pastry Chef for the notable Linton Hopkins and his hospitality group, Hopkins & Company, with a focus on his flagship, Restaurant Eugene. Before moving down South, she was the opening pastry chef at The Grill in New York City, headed by Major Food Group.
Yee’s culinary career began in 2001 as a dessert plater at a local restaurant in her hometown of San Francisco. Knowing she’d been bitten by the pastry bug, she flew herself to London and graduated with distinction with a patisserie diploma from Le Cordon Bleu. Yee remained abroad in the UK to begin her training at Gordon Ramsay’s Menu at The Connaught followed by a position as opening team member of the modern Chinese tea salon, Yauatcha, in Soho.
In 2006 she returned to the U.S. to become pastry sous chef at Gilt inside the ultra-luxe Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue, where she took particular ownership of the fanciful and thorough chocolate program. In 2010, Yee went on to become Charlie Palmer’s pastry chef at Aureole where she was awarded that year’s Rising Star Pastry Chef award, and then on to the 2 Michelin-starred SHO Shaun Hergatt downtown where she was able to showcase her contemporary technique and style.
In early 2013, Yee paired with Chef Andrew Carmellini to open his third restaurant in New York, the French spirited Lafayette Grand Café & Bakery. Her neatly executed desserts in the restaurant, as well as her whimsical takes on traditional patisserie in the café, garnered her three nods from the James Beard Foundation for Outstanding Pastry Chef.
Yee’s talents have been featured in the international Art Culinaire, Pastry Arts, Food Arts, Food & Wine, and Saveur Magazine to name a few.