G Magazine's November 2009 issue featured two of our very own & we're proud! Congratulations to Ildi Revi of Leopard Forest Coffee Company & Irmgard Looser of Rainer's.
Food and Wine: The Naturals
November 2009
Relying on old-fashioned recipes and time-tested techniques, these Upstate food artisans serve up the past, one confection (or concoction) at a time
Photographs by: Patrick Cavan Brown
It’s arguable that food has never been so in style. From Top Chef to Food Network to Julie and Julia, we dine in an age where farming trends, celebrity chefs, and blogs about last night’s dinner are about as commonplace as frozen pizza. We are attuned to food, not only for its tastes, its connection to our health and environment, or the pleasure of turning out a really fine meal—but also to seek specialness in a world fast becoming too flat, connected, indistinct, and impersonal.
In our twenty-first-century pace, there is something wholly comforting about the purity and slowness of food made by hand. Its quality is noticeably superior—not to mention mouthwateringly delicious—and its tinkerers, scientists, and artists have become sacred keepers of time-tested culinary traditions. They are links to the past, to a time when life felt a bit less hurried. Lucky for us, these Upstate artisans continue to thrive.
The Cake Maven
Pastry artist Irmgard Looser’s cakes look almost too pretty to eat
by Blair Knobel
Irmgard Looser Cake creator
Eat Cake: Irmgard’s cakes are available at Rainer’s, 610-A South Main Street, in downtown Greenville. (864) 232-1753
She makes a fresh delivery every Tuesday morning, and her offerings vary weekly.
Faced with such elegant cakes, it’s hard to believe their creator was, at one time, thoroughly opposed to the job. “I hated baking,” confesses Irmgard Looser, the petite Hamburg-born baker extraordinaire. “I would buy $20 worth of ingredients and make a mess out of it.”
But after ten years of co-owning Haus Edelweiss, a local deli and gift shop offering German bites and knickknacks, Irmgard decided to change course. Having relatively little pastry experience—let alone at a fine-dining establishment—she convinced the executive chef of Greenville’s venerable Seven Oaks Restaurant to hire her to lead his pastry program. Then, instead of earning pedigree at a sterling culinary school or even taking a single class, the determined Irmgard taught herself the intricacies of cake making—by poring over texts, experimenting with ingredients, and calling on her own European roots. “I suppose it is the German in me; I refused to quit.”
Twenty years later, Irmgard continues to challenge herself to the delight of friends, family, and customers of Rainer’s, an artsy café near Greenville’s West End. Her cakes stand out artistically (fresh berries dance around precisely appointed swirls of white-chocolate mousse), technically (a delicate chocolate-rum mousse cake is a structural marvel, keenly executed and perfectly balanced), and authentically: Each of Irmgard’s cakes is a mouthwatering result of her own tinkering and trial-and-error baking process. She is a perfectionist and purist, often using imported ingredients to meet her high standard.
And the taste?
“I don’t do shortcuts,” she asserts. “If you’re going to splurge on calories, you might as well make the most of it. I use only the best ingredients and no preservatives.”
An assertion in this case (or any displaying Irmgard’s stunning work) that is deliciously apparent.
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