The K Street Shuffle

Chris Hutcheson comes full circle in the nation’s capital

To the rest of the country, K Street is the power corridor of the nation’s capital, home to top lobbying and law firms. For Chris Hutcheson, it means something else entirely.  The man in charge of desserts at Acadiana – with its southern Louisiana heritage, one of Washington’s great restaurants for sweets – got started in his pastry career at a boutique bakery on K Street, long before finding himself back at the prime corner of K and 9^th Streets and New York Avenue, just across from the Washington Convention Center. 

In fact, it all started when Chris Hutcheson was in 8^th grade out in Springfield, Virginia where he grew up.  It was career day at school, but with a twist:  the kids had to shadow a grown up at work, but it couldn’t be either parent.  So Chris tagged along with a friend of his parents who owned La Petite Bonbonnière, a small pastry and chocolate shop in the heart of the business district.  “I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?  You get to do this every day?!’” laughs Chris. “Obviously, he made it look easy. But after that, whenever anyone asked me what I was going to do when I grew up – I had my answer.”

To that end, Hutcheson applied to the Culinary Institute of America straight out of high school. When he discovered the prestigious institute required six months’ professional experience, he found work at Great Harvest, an artisan bread bakery in Arlington, Virginia, where they produced fine breads from their own stone ground whole wheat flour. “To this day, it was one of the most enjoyable jobs I can imagine,” remembers Chris, “the production area was actually within in the retail space, and all day long people were walking in and out telling us ‘What you make is awesome!’  How could you want anything else?”

He graduated from the CIA with a degree in Culinary Arts, with six intensive weeks of bread and pastry training under his belt. “At that point, I wasn’t determined to become a pastry chef, but my first job out of school landed me in pastry by default.”  That job was at Market Salamander, an upscale chef-operated market in Middleburg, Virginia under Executive Chef Todd Gray, where a team of creative young chefs, not having to support a regular menu, dreamed up and created dishes of the finest ingredients. Chris’ focus was on what he calls “southern comfort baking,” with all a dish’s flavors contained in one unit, since the carry-out format didn’t allow for ice creams, sauces, or garnishes. He perfected his repertoire of compound cakes, the local favorite apple pie, and yes, even tiramisu.

When the market’s ‘culinary laboratory’ model shifted, Chris decided it was time to move on to a more conventional restaurant kitchen. He landed at Washington’s Park Hyatt Hotel, whose Melrose restaurant closed for renovations after only a few months. His next fateful move was to Acadiana, where he was hired as Executive Pastry Chef David Guas’ assistant.  And so Chris Hutcheson found himself back on K Street. 

Guas, a native of New Orleans, had a wealth of childhood memories and family recipes to draw on for the Acadiana dessert menu. Chris learned all he could from the veteran self-taught chef who had opened each of the Passion Food Hospitality restaurants.  “Admittedly, I didn’t have his ideal background for this kind of cooking, so it was great to hear all his first-hand accounts,” says Chris, “I had been to New Olreans once, in school, and you’d better believe I wish I’d taken notes.  I do remember the beignets at Café du Monde and all the pralines, but I’ll just have to get myself back there…”  In August of 2007, Guas set out to establish his own consultancy and work on his first cookbook, and Chris was tapped to succeed him as Pastry Chef at Acadiana.