For Beverly Hilton’s
Executive Pastry Chef Konrad Spitzbart,
Love of Chocolate Began Early

Judging from the elaborate pastries and the clever desserts Executive Pastry Chef Konrad Spitzbart creates for glitzy events at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA, you’d never guess he started learning his craft from his mother on a small farm in Austria. Her favorite flavor was chocolate and she passed her love along to her son.

By Patricia D. Sherman

Chef Konrad talked to ChocolateAtlas.com about how he came to be an artist in chocolate. 

CA: What is your chocolate philosophy?
CHEF KONRAD:  If I use chocolate as a dessert, I try to make chocolate the primary flavor and only highlight the taste and keep it simple. I am always trying to create new and tasty desserts with chocolate.

CA: What is your favorite chocolate to work with?
CHEF KONRAD: Different flavors of bittersweet chocolates are my favorites.  There is such a variety of chocolate flavors, and every one has a different palate of taste and balance between sugar, cocoa mass and cocoa butter.

CA: What is your signature chocolate dessert?
CHEF KONRAD:  My signature recipe is Cherry Brandy Chocolate Mousse, which was the dessert for the 2005 Golden Globe Awards held here at the Beverly Hilton.  For the event we served the mousse inside a gold dusted chocolate dome and decorated the dessert with a film strip made out of white and dark chocolate. (Check the Cherry Brandy Chocolate Mousse recipe in Signature Recipes.)

CA: What is your earliest chocolate memory?
CHEF KONRAD: My earliest memories are probably baking with my mother.  She really loved chocolate desserts, so whenever she would be baking it would almost always be with chocolate.

CA: Besides desserts, how else do you use chocolate?
Some of the things I used in chocolate are a hint of jasmine tea with milk chocolate and different spices (curry, ginger, etc).  One of the promotions we had was artichokes, so in keeping with that theme I created a dessert where I cooked baby artichokes in simple syrup, filled them with citrus flavored almond paste and dipped them in dark chocolate like a truffle.

More about Executive Pastry Chef Konrad Spitzbart 

Chef Konrad says he started baking with his mother at the age of seven, inventing new creations, sampling various ingredients and trying new combinations. He had a good thing goinge, then, he says. While he created,  his mother took care of the dishes.  Today, Spitzbart admits that washing dishes is still the least favorite part of his work. Luckily, with a team of 12 assistants, he can now spend most of his time doing what he loves: creating delectable pastries.

Spitzbart began his professional career apprenticing and training in Austrian restaurants.   He served as head chef at two fine dining locations before moving to America.  When Spitzbart arrived in Detroit in 1995, he decided to stray from a traditional restaurant job and accepted an offer to be a pastry chef at the Ritz-Carlton, Dearborn. Since then, he has focused solely on the art of pastry backing.

Instantly fascinated with the constant blend of cultures and creative freedom he had within the hospitality industry, Spitzbart stayed at the Ritz-Carlton, Dearborn for the next three years and became assistant pastry chef.  Thriving in the fast-paced hotel atmosphere, Spitzbart moved to Los Angeles and accepted a position as executive pastry chef at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he stayed for five years.  Then, excited by the opportunity to contribute to the complete reinvention of a property, Spitzbart joined The Beverly Hilton.  Now, as the hotel’s executive pastry chef, Spitzbart insures guests’ desserts are as luxurious as the rest of their stay.

His typical day at The Beverly Hilton begins at 5 a.m., when he and his team begin making bread and pastries for the hotel’s two restaurants and for any banquets taking place on the property.  The first task each morning is to make fresh batches of dough – Spitzbart’s team is one of the few in the country that creates complex pastries, such as croissants, from scratch.  His kitchen is equipped with a new four-deck stone bread oven.

Spitzbart’s afternoons are reserved for experiments.  During this time he hones his creations for high-profile events such as the Golden Globe Awards.  For these awards and countless other galas, Spitzbart is charged with inventing a dramatic dessert to end the evening.  For this year’s Golden Globe Awards, Spitzbart created a golden chocolate dome, filled with cherry brandy mousse, decorated with a chocolate film strip. Spitzbart says his most rewarding moments are watching diners break into smiles when they sample his team’s desserts.

For more information, see www.beverlyhilton.com.

Patricia D. Sherman is editor of ChocolateAtlas.com

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