By the time the dining staff had finished serving creme brulée, the student body was in frenzy. Its top was crispy, its cream smooth and delicious. Who had come up with the idea for this amazing dessert, and who was making Friday snacks, cinnamon twists?
The answer was Alex Levin, the new director of dining services, who started working at Sidwell at the end of June.
The Friday snacks were his idea, said Levin in an interview, and they’ve been a hit so far. Levin said it can be “tricky to make 1,200 portions of a dessert or a treat,” so snacks for just upper schoolers are “are a nice way to create a special experience that is for the high school and is unique to one of the groups.”
Levin didn’t always work at schools. Ten years after graduating from Yale in 2000, Levin shifted from working in finance to studying at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York. He spent two years at the CIA, concurrently training with pastry chefs at different restaurants in New York.
He continued his training until 2013, when he came to Washington, DC, helping open Osteria Morini, a restaurant on Water Street. He served as Osteria Morini’s executive pastry chef for three years, creating pastries like a molten chocolate cake with a ganache center. He also prepared “deconstructed desserts,” taking inspiration from a traditional dessert and arranging separate aspects of the dessert on different parts of a plate. This process, according to Levin, “only work[ed] if the new take surpasse[d] the original.”
During Levin’s tenure at Osteria Morini, Joan Nathan, a renowned cookbook author, adapted Levin’s recipes for apple cider honey cake, a dessert for the Jewish New Year, and plum-almond tart for publication in the New York Times.
Levin’s apple cake, inspired by his grandmother’s recipe, was a “lovely and symbolic” dish, Nathan wrote.
After living in DC for twelve years, Levin became familiar with the “anchors,” the defining cultural institutions, of the city. He found that Sidwell makes “Washington, Washington” and is a “wonderful institution.”
On Cinco de Mayo, Levin visited Sidwell and knew it was a great fit. While he enjoyed his time at Osteria Morini, Levin said that working at a restaurant can be “brutal on the body.” He decided that working at Sidwell would allow him to do everything he loved when working at restaurants, without the aspects he disliked. When he visited, Levin noticed everyone seemed to work really well together.
One of Levin’s principles when running a kitchen is to be a “worker among workers.” He believes it is crucial to work side by side with the people on his team and “listen[] to what everybody has to say because we’re all intelligent human beings.”
Levin aims to create a calm workspace with only positive stress. He believes in spaces that are peaceful because negative stress can “really erode at someone’s serenity.” He said that, having grown up in a kitchen with a lot of screaming, he much prefers working in a calm kitchen. At Sidwell, he said, “there isn’t a fire to be put out” metaphorically (and hopefully literally, too) in the kitchen, adding that the kitchen staff works on how they can continue to excel.
Throughout his interview with Horizon, he called out to other members of the kitchen staff.
“Hey, Chaz, Rachel, if you had to describe the way the kitchen environment has changed since I got here, what would you say?” he asked.
“It’s a lot more pleasant, it’s a lot more vibrant, there is a sense of calm in the kitchen,” Chaz Rollins, the lead cook, said.
“There’s more teamwork, too,” cook Rachel Celeste said, adding that the cafeteria has used a lot more “sugar” since Levin started.
When asked which special foods are coming next in the Upper School, Levin said the kitchen staff will likely prepare creme brulée again, perhaps of a different flavor. Other potential dishes include tiramisu, chocolate pot de creme, strawberry shortcake, brioche, cheese danishes, monkey bread, sticky pecan buns and soft pretzels at Homecoming.
