7 days ago
Have a ‘Golden Girls' Cheesecake Moment at This New Ferry Building Shop
is the associate editor for the Northern California and Pacific Northwest region writing about restaurant and bar trends, coffee and cafes, and pop-ups.
A Pacific Northwest-raised chef's cheesecake outfit is headed to San Francisco's waterfront. Nash Bakes has taken over the former Palmvy Hot Dogs kiosk inside the Ferry Building. Owner Jared Nash baked at Northern California restaurants, including now-closed Julia's Kitchen and Orson. He's been grinding on the Peninsula since fall 2023, popping up at the San Carlos Farmers Market and Robert's Market on Woodside Road.
The Nash Bakes kiosk will be open seven days a week, 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., following suit with the push into evening service at the Ferry Building. The operation looks a lot like the Ocean Malasada outpost that debuted in July 2024, bringing Hawaiian treats to a corner near Gott's Roadside.
Unlike Ocean Malasada, Nash Bakes serves a surprisingly wide array of cheesecake varieties. There are classics, including raspberry swirl and salted caramel, six-inch pies going for $30. There's a gluten-free vanilla bean, too, and a lemon poppyseed cheesecake, both a bit outside the general belt for the treat. Further in the outer rim of flavors might be the salmon lox, a caper-dill cheesecake atop a toasted bagel crust with the salmon, capers, and pickled onion flowering from the center like a fishy bouquet.
His pastry chef background is no joke. Nash grew up outside of Portland, Oregon, and worked in commercial bakeries at grocers, including Fred Meyer. Then came culinary school, which led to an internship at the Hyatt in Lake Tahoe. That stint led to eight years crisscrossing the lake's food scene. He worked as pastry chef under San Francisco pastry wiz Nicole Plue at Napa's Julia's Kitchen. Then he was a pastry chef at Orson, then under Arnold Eric Wong, the executive chef of E&O Trading Company. If that wasn't enough, he worked under celebrity chef Elizabeth Faulkner, to boot.
Mulberry cheesecake from Nash Bakes. Nash Bakes
Reflecting that cheffed-up background, Nash serves plenty of seasonal options squarely in the fine dining realm: light purple mulberry cheesecakes when the fruit is ripe in the summer, a margarita cheesecake on a pretzel crust for Cinco de Mayo, a malted Easter egg for the eponymous event.
At the kiosk, he'll be headed back to the basics until he's got his sea legs. The launch menu is simple: vanilla, chocolate, cookies and cream, lemon poppy, raspberry swirl, passionfruit, black sesame, and the salmon lox. Some of those seasonal cheesecakes and one-offs — peanut butter and mint chip, for instance — will come down the road.
Nash opens his kiosk on Wednesday, July 23; the goal right now is to open quietly and make sure things are moving slowly, then he'll announce a grand opening on social media. Historically, he works out of commissary kitchens, which he says can be almost turnkey with the green light from city officials.
All that said, he's not sure what the future of Nash Bakes looks like. The Peninsula farmers' markets have treated him well. This Ferry Building opportunity just came out of the sky, one of the partners there spotted him and invited him to check out the location. A year from now, he'd love to be opening new storefronts or selling at even more farmers markets. 'This is an opportunity for me to get things moving on a regular basis,' Nash says. 'Let's give it a year or two and see where it goes, let the Ferry Building lead me a bit.'
Nash Bakes (1 Ferry Building, Kiosk five) debuts on Wednesday, July 23, and will be open seven days a week from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
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