812: Building Birdee Bakery with Renata Ameni

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**Renata Ameni** (1:08)
To this day, sometimes I'm like, oh, I can't believe I actually have a bakery in this building, right? Because when I'm there every day, I become like Jayden. But sometimes when you are like at the bridge, you're like driving and then you see the building and you're like, oh my God, holy shit, that's where I work.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:24)
Oh, I wonder what's there.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (1:25)
Oh, it's my bakery.
This is TASTE. I'm your host, Aliza Abarbanel. Renata Ameni is the chef partner of Birdee, a bakery and all day cafe on the Williamsburg waterfront. The Brazilian-born chef is a fine dining veteran who worked at Eleven Madison Park and opened Crown Shy before hopping over into more casual territory. Today on the show, we talk about bridging the gap between different styles of restaurants, making singular pastries and more. Renata Ameni, this is TASTE. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

**Renata Ameni** (2:02)
Thank you for having me.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (2:04)
How did I do with my Brazilian pronunciation?

**Renata Ameni** (2:07)
Absolutely perfect.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (2:09)
I'm ready to go to Brazil.
I'm really happy to have you in the studio. I think your pastries are so delicious and your career is so interesting. I'm excited to get into all of that. But beforehand, I'm wondering if you would tell me an early food memory from growing up that you think somehow, shows your point of view, was important to you.

**Renata Ameni** (2:29)
I have a memory, it's like in a specific food. But when I was little, my dad used to take us to dinner every Friday night. So it was something that, and all kinds of restaurants. In Brazil, we don't have kids menu. So you would just eat whatever your parents would order for you. And that's, I have this memory. I think that's one of the reasons why I kind of started going, like working in restaurants. It's just like very nostalgic.
Yeah, but like one, I remember the first time like I tried like oysters. But I don't have like a specific food memory.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (3:09)
Did you like oysters the first time?

**Renata Ameni** (3:10)
I did, I loved it, yeah. And then I just made my dad like you like order more.
Yeah, it was weird. I loved it. I think it was like eight years old or something.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (3:20)
Well, to be honest, I still don't really like oysters. So eight-year-old you had something up on me. And can you tell me about when did you first decide that you wanted to work in food and what did your career kind of look like?

**Renata Ameni** (3:35)
Well, I actually, I didn't go to culinary school at all. So I've been doing this for like 22 years. So 20 years ago, like in Brazil, there wasn't even like a culinary school. I actually went to school for advertising and marketing. And then there wasn't a culinary school, but there was a hotel management school. And I'm like, oh, this could be cool, you know, a little bit more. I didn't really like what I was studying. And I'm like, I need to find something else, but I want to kind of like finish what I was doing. So I kind of double major, I went to like two schools in hotel management. And then you have a little bit of like culinary lessons.
And then, I mean, I really liked it, but I didn't want to do savory at all, it was really complicated. So I decided to do pastry. And little did I know that it's actually more complicated. So much harder.
And that's kind of how I got into.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (4:41)