in

Good Taste: Manifest Bread Is the Area’s Best New Bakery

[ad_1]

It feels like Rick and Tyes Cook have always been together. When they talk, they correct each other, fill in the blanks when one forgets something, add onto each other’s stories. The couple started dating in 2000 while attending C.D. Hylton High School in Woodbridge, Virginia; they married in 2014. Now they are co-owners of the area’s best new bakery, Riverdale Park’s Manifest Bread—he does the baking and she handles everything else.

Both are longtime restaurant industry pros. Tyes worked front of the house positions at Pearl Dive Oyster Palace, Fiola Mare, Del Mar, and Obelisk. Rick had jobs in restaurants growing up but didn’t take the work seriously. That changed when he moved to Savannah, Georgia, and spent time at the historic Gottlieb’s Bakery (which shuttered in 2020). Upon returning to the D.C. area, he got a gig working at BlackSalt under chef Danny Wells, whom Rick credits with his maturation as a chef. “He opened the door for me,” Rick says. “He saw my potential and beat the shit out of me.”

In 2009, Rick became the chef of BlackSalt. After three years, he felt restless, so he went out to Oregon’s Willamette Valley to participate in a wine harvest. When he came home, he worked at the original Addie’s in Rockville until it closed in 2013, then spent time at CityZen under Eric Ziebold and with Frank Ruta at The Grill Room in the Capella Hotel in Georgetown. His last stops before the bakery were a stint at Etto and a five-year stretch at 2 Amys.

Manifest Bread’s roots overlap the couple’s restaurant careers, stretching back five years, when Rick began baking loaves in their modest home in Cottage City, Maryland. They sold them at events at Weygandt Wines in Cleveland Park, where they started building a following.

A loaf from Manifest Bread in Riverdale Park, Maryland
A loaf from Manifest Bread Credit: Nevin Martell

The pandemic crushed the pop-ups but didn’t diminish their desire to keep baking. Instead, the pair decided they would ramp up their output. “We wore three layers of gloves and four layers of masks so we could deliver the bread to whoever wanted it,” Tyes recalls.

[ad_2]

Source link

What do you think?

Written by enovate

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings

Jan. 6ers and Marjorie Taylor Greene Drive Attention to the D.C. Jail. Real Reform Remains Elusive.

DCHA Director Donald Refuses To Say Who Approved Her Bonus