Inga Theeke grew up with Latvian baking. Like pīrāgis.
“It is like yeast dough filled, usually, with bacon and onion,” says Theeke, who is from Chicago. “A little bit of ham in there. And that is the official Latvian treat.
“Every grandmother has their touch to it. It’s one of those things. They can’t give you the recipe, but they can show you if you spend some time with them in the kitchen.”
Theeke keeps busy nowadays baking things like seasonal pear tarte Tatins and pumpkin cheesecake over gluten-free spice cake.
She moved to Memphis in July 2021 to become pastry chef for all of the Kelly English restaurants, which include Restaurant Iris, Pantà, Second Line, and Fino’s from the Hill, and for the catering arm, Iris Etc.
Theeke worked in human resources in Chicago, but that changed after she went to pastry school at Kendall College. “I thought I was going to learn more about techniques and recipe development and just use it for hosting family and friends. But I caught the bug and started working for some fine dining restaurants after that.”
She worked as a pastry chef at Carlos’ in Highland Park, and the old 302 West in Geneva, Illinois.
Her specialty is “maybe taking an ingredient or something we haven’t always used in pastry and figuring out how to pull that together into something unique. I’m one of the rare birds that really likes change. So, being in an environment we have now, where we can pivot and try things out, has really been fun.”
Theeke met her current employer online. “During the pandemic, I looked into one of Kelly English’s Zoom classes and participated with about 70 people around the country. I watched him make a dish.”
She found English “so engaging and so real in connection with people via Zoom” and contacted him the next day. “And I said, ‘I don’t know if you are hiring, but this is who I am and keep in touch.’ We started a conversation and that turned into this position.”
Theeke, whose daughter graduated from Rhodes College, had visited Downtown and Midtown Memphis. She found Memphis “so authentic and so inviting.”
She expanded Fino’s menu. “I changed their tiramisu recipe to make it a little more traditional and easier for more production.”
Theeke then came up with the desserts at Pantà. “I’m a food anthropologist at heart. Although I’ve never been to Spain, I had the opportunity to do the research and do the homework when I prepared the dessert menu for Pantà. I dug into cookbooks, travel journals, online research — anything about the Catalan region I could access from Memphis. It wasn’t just the items but the stories behind them, so when the server brought it to the table, they could tell you how that fit into Catalan culture and the traditions as well.”
She also met people who had spent time in that region, asked them what they ate, what it tasted like, and then she created something.
Like brazo de gitano. “Ours here is a chocolate cake rolled with chocolate ganache in between and then finished with a little bit of latte crème anglaise. The style is a little bit different from what I believe is served in Spain, but it resembles it enough.”
As for the Iris desserts, Theeke says, “The goal is definitely to offer a traditional Creole menu with our own spin on things as well. Again, I have been to New Orleans, but I did my research on these as well so that we understand the story behind some of these. Like bananas Foster. It’s everything you think of in a Creole restaurant’s Foster, but our twist here is to make it a bananas Foster within a tres leches cake. Bring that roasted banana and rum taste through it. And then our crème brûlée here features a chicory coffee flavor.”
All the restaurants “set the tone” for what the dessert menu will look like. But Theeke says, “Every now and then I’ll come up with something. And they’ll let me know if I’ve crossed the line between forgiveness and permission.”