Pastry chef William Werner (polite/persuasion, Quince, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company) is launching ~TELL TALE PRESERVE COMPANY~ with the Whisk Group on Maiden Lane this November. It’s going to be a modern French pâtisserie and delicatessen, serving a variety of housemade pastries, confections, preserves, sandwiches, salads, and desserts. The 24-foot pastry case will include items like creamsicle éclairs, Werner’s “tiles” (small square tarts), tea cakes by the slice or as a loaf, madeleines, nougats, and more. The housemade “preserves” will be sold in five- to eight-ounce Weck jars, provided for a nominal one-time deposit fee; there will be jams, marmalade, and chocolate—both sweet (like roasted banana with dark chocolate and rum), and savory (like a terrine of foie gras with Palmira chocolate and port).
There will be breakfast sandwiches served everyday until 11am and housemade granola, and for lunch, soups, salads, sandwiches, like a tartine of duck confit, and savory cakes, including roasted corn with chorizo and speck with semi-dried figs. There will also be coffee, tea, beer, wine, sherry, and look at that, caramel horchata.
The 1,100-square-foot space will have 20 indoor and 20 outdoor seats. It will be designed with Jim Zack of Zack | de Vito Architecture, featuring reclaimed wood floors, marble counters, custom retro light fixtures, antique scales, and exposed brick walls. Hours will be Mon-Fri 7am-7pm, and Sat-Sun 9am-5pm.
Werner also has a new off-site production kitchen in Dogpatch, which will serve wholesale accounts and production for his “Tell Tale Society,” a monthly subscription service with pastries, preserves, confections, and savory breads. The cost is $35 per month and customers can either pick up their package or have it shipped. The first one includes almond financiers, plum-lychee pâtes de fruit, confiture “café” au lait (coffee-laced milk jam), caramels with volcanic sea salt, savory tomato-semolina bread, praline marshmallows, and raspberry-white chocolate sandwich cookies.
Rendering of the storefront.
