Claudia Fleming’s new role is a homecoming

Celebrated pastry chef Claudia Fleming wrote one of the most treasured dessert books ever, The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern. The 2001 volume was so revered that used copies were selling for hundreds of dollars before the book was reissued in 2019. The Washington Post’s Daniela Galarza recently interviewed Fleming, focusing on her newly released book, Delectable: Sweet & Savory Baking.

Fleming’s storied career included working in New York restaurants such as Union Square Cafe, Montrachet, TriBeCa Grill, and Gramercy Tavern, and at Fauchon in Paris. In 2006, Fleming and her husband, chef Gerry Hayden, opened The North Fork Table & Inn in Southold, NY, which they ran together until Hayden’s death in 2015. In 2020, Fleming sold North Fork Table & Inn to an investment group.

Fleming returned to Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group as Executive Pastry Chef in 2021 and is currently working as executive culinary director of Daily Provisions, the group’s small chain of casual cafes. Like so many of us during the pandemic, Fleming found herself cooking and baking in solitude. She tweaked old family recipes, telling Galarza “I was revisiting the past through baking.” This inward reflection resulted in a cookbook more geared toward home bakers than her 2001 release. As she writes in the foreword to her new book, “At some point — I can’t say when — I realized my practice of baking at home was just what I needed.”