Behind the scenes with Valentine's James Beard-nominated pastry chef

Crystal Kass' creative mind works overtime.

“I can’t really turn my brain off ever,” the Valentine pastry chef says on a recent afternoon, sitting in the Melrose restaurant’s sibling Bar 1912. “I feel like I never stop thinking about what’s next, what I have to do, what would I like to do.”

Perhaps that plays a role in Kass’ second consecutive nomination for a James Beard Award, the culinary honor that is often described as the Oscars of food.

This year, she and Valley chef Rene Andrade have advanced as finalists. Kass is in the running for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker and Andrade for Best Chef - Southwest. Kass was a semifinalist for the same category in 2023, a year when no Arizona chefs were named finalists. In between, Eater dubbed her one of five “Pastry Chefs Defining Restaurant Dessert Right Now.”

Valentine is a love letter to the history and ingredients of Arizona and the Southwest, and at the restaurant, Kass oversees the four-person team that turns out breakfast pastries, White Sonoran Wheat pretzels and plated desserts, such as rich pieces of tres leches cake.

“I’m just really excited that everything we’re doing here at Valentine is being showcased and people are recognizing it. I think that’s really great,” Kass says. “But I still will never get used to any of this recognition. It’s very weird for me.”

In the lead-up to the James Beard Award announcements this year, Kass decided she would turn off her phone notifications, not wanting to spoil the news that would come in first thing in the morning when she was getting ready for work.

“I think I still got a message or a text message,” she says. “It was exciting.”

Taking the leap to become a pastry chef

Kass arrived in the Valley in 2015 after studying at The French Pastry School in Chicago and working for two years at bakeries in the midwestern culinary mecca.

“I moved to Arizona, honestly it was just to get out of the Chicago weather,” she says.

But, Kass found more than warmer climes, taking on opportunities to work on her craft, starting at the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn before baking at the now-shuttered Phoenix Public Market Cafe, Sweet Dee’s Bakeshop and the high-end, local ingredient-driven restaurant Persepshen. She joined Valentine in 2021.

But the pastry chef wasn’t always planning to make baking a career. Though she learned to bake from her mom and grew up making cookies and family recipes like her mom’s “world-famous carrot cake,” she initially set out to study kinesiology in college. When that didn’t feel like the right path, Kass kept going back to baking.

Despite being “terrified to take that leap,” she enrolled in pastry school, and the rest is history.

“I’ve been doing this for 11 years now, that’s crazy,” she says, laughing. Kass loves the breadth of pastry work that an all-day restaurant like Valentine allows her and the pastry team to take on.

“I can be a little more adventurous,” she says. “Working in a restaurant allows me to step out of a box a little bit more.”

The chef draws on childhood memories and Valentine's pantry full of distinctly Southwestern ingredients to inspire new items in the pastry case or on the dessert menu.

“The tres leches cake we have on the menu, I grew up eating that every family party we had,” she says.

She also makes sure to put the “Valentine spin” on each dessert. In the case of the tres leches cake, that means adding a layer of cajeta, which is “like a goat’s milk caramel,” she explains.

On a recent Saturday, Kass is in the kitchen tucked behind Bar 1912, testing a recipe for a sunflower butter ice cream bar dipped in a chocolate shell and a seed blend.

“I love to eat ice cream so I think that’s why I also love making it,” Kass says. “I feel like I can be more creative when I’m making ice cream flavors. I kind of like to challenge myself to see what kind of ice cream flavor I can make.”

After Kass gets the ice cream base prepped, she jumps in to help pastry cook Samira Alawi roll out pretzels and then shifts to preparing the sponge for Valentine’s tres leches.

“We get to do a lot of everything. It’s fun,” Kass says.

In addition to testing new desserts, Kass has recently focused on incorporating more savory ingredients, such as herbs and chiles, into the restaurant’s sweet offerings.

Those sweet-savory combos have resulted, among others, in a mole brownie with chiltepin; a mango panna cotta with housemade chamoy, coconut whipped cream, cucumber granita and cilantro powder; and a Danish with a white chocolate, chamomile and bay leaf pastry cream that’s topped with fresh mulberries.

“Adding savory aspects just changes the complexity of things,” she says.

‘A finalist is a win’

Valentine chef Donald Hawk, who helms the restaurant's kitchen, says the way the team works so cohesively – from owners Blaise Faber and Chadwick Price to those on the line or making pastries – is part of their success.

“We have a lot of special people who work here and we’re very, very grateful and fortunate,” Hawk says.


The restaurant is no stranger to accolades. Hawk was nominated for a James Beard Award as a semifinalist for Emerging Chef in 2022. Valentine’s drinks program also got a nod this year from the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards as a regional honoree for Best U.S. Restaurant Bar.

Hawk calls Kass “a huge inspiration.”

He’ll accompany her to Chicago for the upcoming James Beard Awards ceremony, which will take place on June 10. Kass says she’s not thinking about the award leading up to the event, which will bring her back to the city where her pastry career started.

“I’m going in with the expectation that I’m not winning,” she says. “A finalist is a win for me.”

No matter the outcome, Kass says she’s grateful to be part of the Valley’s culinary community.

“I’m really enjoying seeing the food scene here in Phoenix get to where it’s at,” Kass says. “It’s pretty cool to be a part of that, too.”

Valentine

4130 N. Seventh Ave.