THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702090313
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: ON THE TOWN IN PORTSMOUTH
SOURCE: Sam Martinette
LENGTH: 89 lines
Possibly the best-kept secret in Portsmouth is Sweet Temptations in Port Norfolk, a first-class pastry shop that draws customers from as far away as Williamsburg and Virginia Beach.
For the past three years, this little shop on Detroit Street, just off Mount Vernon Avenue, has been serving up everything from Baked Alaska to fine European-style pastries such as Napoleons, eclairs and strudels.
Closed Mondays, the baking begins in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. By midweek the showcases are full of oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, lemon supreme, macaroons and other cookies; fruit and cheese Danish; brownies, sables, apple, blueberry, cherry and peach pies; lemon meringue, banana cream, pecan and coconut pies; Mandarin orange, pistachio, mocha and chocolate raspberry cakes; jelly-filled wedding cakes and many more temptations as mysterious as they are colorful.
Partners Moses Brown and Bonnie Skillman first worked together at the Founders Inn in Virginia Beach, where he was executive pastry chef and she assistant pastry chef. Brown has baked pastries since he was a teen-ager.
``I went to one of three food high schools in New York in the 1960s, and because I graduated third out of 200, I was given a union membership and apprenticed under European pastry chefs for three years,'' he said. ``I traveled around the world without leaving New York City.''
Brown prepares many pastries that are hard to find in our area.
``Like New York, we have many ethnic people living here, so I try to create a little bit of each country for my showcase,'' he said.
Brown says he uses chocolates from France and Belgium, and jellies and jams from France:
``Those jellies do not have an overabundance of sugar and chemical preservatives. We use no chemicals whatsoever, and even our frosting and cakes are not sugary. We deal in flavor, not sugar.''
The assortment of cookies, eclairs, cannoli and other pastries we sampled from Sweet Temptations bear out the chef's claims. The cream-filled pastries were surprisingly light, and all were beautiful. The cookies were large, and a sugar cookie was more like a cake than the bite and snap cookie I am used to. My 6-year-old son, Jake, announced that he wanted to work there so that when he took a break he could eat something from the display case.
So how did chefs Brown and Skillman come to Port Norfolk?
``We did a survey of the area so far as fine pastries were concerned and found none,'' Brown said. ``I saw this area as a Little Washington or Little New York. We looked in Ghent in Norfolk, and the rents were too high. My partner lived in Portsmouth, and we knew the area wasn't oversaturated with restaurants.''
``We were told our location would never work,'' Skillman said.
A native of the College Place neighborhood who worked at the Norfolk Airport Hilton before joining Brown at the Founder's Inn, Skillman calls him her mentor.
``Now our business is 50 percent retail and 50 percent wholesale,'' she said, ``and because we're not far from the Midtown tunnel and the Monitor-Merrimac tunnel, we draw more business from other cities than from Portsmouth.''
Business has been so good the partners are planning to expand within the Victorian home they occupy and add a refrigerated truck for deliveries. They also have a plan to supply kosher goods. The creation of their pastries is clearly a labor of love.
``This business is a dying art,'' Brown said. ``Most people come out of culinary school and just want to do the glory things, the things that gratify their ego and bring instant recognition.''
The Delta Kappa Gamma author luncheon is set for noon Saturday, March 8, at the Scottish Rite Temple on Cedar Lane. Speaking on ``Finding the Courage to Write'' will be MaryAnne Gleason, the Virginia Beach author and teacher whose mystery romance thriller ``Forbidden Obsession,'' set in Norfolk's Ghent, was published last year.
The Portsmouth chapter of the international society of women educators was founded in 1937, and the author's luncheon was started in 1983 as a means of funding the Katherine B. Woodard Award, named after the chapter's founder. The award is given to a graduating senior from a Portsmouth public school. Tickets are $12.50. For information, call Iris Wise (484-1233) or Marilyn Peacock (484-7923). ILLUSTRATION: Photo by SAM MARTINETTE
Sweet Temptations partners Bonnie Skillman and Moses Brown will soon
expand their pastry business.
Graphic
AT A GLANCE
Sweet Temptations: 2723 Detroit St., 393-0772.
Food: fine pastries, wedding cakes, cookies, cakes and pies.
Hours: 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday, closed Monday.