Page 19 - foodservice news - July 2018

DINING
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Andrew Bowden and Maddison Howes, co-owners of Sydney cafe, Saga.
SWEET SAGA
FROM REIMAGING RESTAURANT DESSERTS TO GAME-CHANGING LAYER CAKES AND A SAVOURY SPIN ON THE CLASSIC PATISSERIE, ANDREW BOWDEN ALWAYS FOLLOW HIS GUT – AND IT’S OFTEN OUTSIDE OF THE CAKE BOX, WRITES YASMIN NEWMAN.
“Ican always hold the phone for Andy if he’s covered in caramel.” This is Maddison Howes, one half of Team Saga as we’re trying to set up a time for the interview for this story. If you
follow the bakery-patisserie-cafe on social media, or indeed Andy Bowdy himself, it’s a vision of the cake wizard you can easily envision. Andrew Bowden, his given name now overshadowed by his ‘pastry
alter ego’ Andy Bowdy, built a strong following as pastry chef at Newtown hotspot Hartsyard, dishing up then game-changing desserts, including towering layer cakes, OTT plated soft serves, and ‘that sundae’: a combination of banana, peanut butter and heart attack special. In the age of Instagram, his fan base was both IRL and online, the two feeding each other Bowden’s oversized weekly pie.
The chef gives a comical run-down of how he ended up in pastry: two failed attempts at uni, bluffing his way into a London kitchen and almost cutting his finger off in the savoury section, before finding his calling in sweets. He was always the little fat kid hovering near Nan’s cake bowls, so it was only natural really.
From that point, it was heads down, bums up dedication to the craft, with multiple-year stints at then-renowned Pink Salt and Summit Restaurant back in Sydney. “I really look up to all the pastry chefs I’ve worked under,” says Bowden. “I’ve been lucky to have people who had time to answer my questions.” Is this rare? “Ultimately, you learn as much as you want to, but some chefs expect you to know everything and others are willing to share their knowledge.”
It was at Wildfire, where Bowden was running the pastry kitchen, that he met Gregory Llewellyn. If everyone has a creation story, this was a pivotal moment for the two. Llewellyn’s down-home, technique-high approach to American cooking at Hartsyard was its own runaway success, but it’s fair to say that Bowden, who left Wildfire to join the start-up, fuelled the thunderous fire with his inventive sweet creations. It was a cooking match made in heaven.
Bowden says he could never have anticipated the success, particularly given the off-the-beaten-path location in Newtown. “No one turns left unless they’re going to Enmore Theatre or Oporto,” he recalls telling him. “But I was over working in a big restaurant and Greg sold me on the idea of cooking stuff we wanted to cook.” That infamous, Insta-famous sundae? The idea began at