Linton Hopkins’ Resurgens Hospitality Group is already full of talented culinarians. But it just added another formidable name to its chef lineup.
Three-time James Beard Award nominee Jen Yee has joined the company as its executive pastry chef. She will oversee the pastry program for all of the group's concepts, including Restaurant Eugene, and the newest addition, C. Ellet's, a steakhouse located at The Battery at SunTrust Park.
Yee, 39, comes to Atlanta after having worked the last 12 years in New York at such places as the now shuttered Gilt at the Palace Hotel, Charlie Palmer’s Aureole, and most recently Lafayette Grand Bakery & Café. Prior to that, she lived three years in London, where she attended Le Cordon Bleu culinary school.
The Bay Area native has seen numerous accolades of late. In 2016, she was a James Beard Award finalist in the Outstanding Pastry Chef category, and a semi-finalist in the category in 2014 and 2015. Food & Wine magazine named her among the Best New Pastry Chefs in 2014, the same year that Dessert Professional magazine listed her as one of the Top 10 Pastry Chefs in America.
Joining the Resurgens team will be a bit of a reunion for Yee. She and Resurgens’ culinary director Damon Wise worked together at Lafayette.
“He was chef de cuisine. I was pastry chef. We had a really good rapport. We work well together,” Yee said. It was Wise who reached out to her about joining the team as its executive pastry chef, a newly created position for Resurgens.
Now in her second week on the job, Yee is currently focusing on the pastry program at C. Ellet’s. While she wants to “stay within a steakhouse framework when it comes to desserts” at C. Ellet's, it is important to her to familiarize herself with local southern ingredients and incorporate those into dessert offerings.
“I was just introduced to the muscadine and scuppernong. They are so beautiful and I had to use them.”
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