Meet PCG Member – Ashley Boyd: Bolder Desserts, Locally Sourced

Ashley Boyd has been the pastry chef at her family’s Dilworth restaurant, 300 East, since 2014. She never intended to join the family business. She wanted to paint and sculpt.

After high school, Ashley pursued a degree in fine arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduating, Ashley became disenchanted with Chicago’s art industry and decided to work at a restaurant. Looking back, she realizes her artwork had taken on a food and vegetation theme.

“Food gradually took over my brain,” she says. “I finally got a job in a restaurant and never looked back.”

Despite spending her early teens working as a hostess and server at 300 East, Ashley wasn’t aware pastry chefs existed. It was while working the pantry station at a Chicago Brazilian restaurant where she met her first pastry chef. “I didn’t know a pastry chef was a thing,” Ashley says.

She started going to work on her days off to make desserts. During her two years at the restaurant, Boyd learned how to tell when a custard was done, candy an entire orange and bake tuile cookies and breads. They made crème caramel, the Carmen Miranda (tuile shaped like a hat with scoops of sorbet), and Brazilian Wedding Cake (trés leches cake) – all within the Brazilian theme the restaurant warranted.

By 2001, after short stints in Detroit and Charleston, Boyd moved back to Charlotte to become the general manager at 300 East. She served in the position for six years and then narrowed her focus to desserts to allow more time for her young children.

Ashley joined Piedmont Culinary Guild the first year it was founded. For her, it became an instant and easy network of chefs, restaurant owners and farmers to share ideas and offer support.

“Before PCG, I didn’t feel like I had any type of network. Everybody was doing their own thing, in their own pocket. We never really get out of our restaurants. In PCG, we encourage each other to push things a little further to advance what’s happening in our food community. Do bolder food. Do things people haven’t necessarily seen before. Put those things in front of diners and make it a thing people can relate to and want to eat. And it’s not weird anymore.”

PCG member, Jason Alexander, co-founder of Free Range Brewing, met Boyd a few years ago and finds her approachable manner a reason for the organization to thrive. “Ashley has been one of the most influential people in helping grow PCG,” he says. “She’s given it the roots and foundation.”

In November, when Ashley needed a place to host a fundraiser for Hurricane Florence victims, she called on Jason for help. He was quick to donate the space for Lovin’ From The Oven – An All-Star Bake Sale because of the positive experiences he’d had with her.

“We’d gotten good interactions and such quality growth through our relationship with Piedmont Culinary Guild that we basically say to all the members, ‘whatever, you need – space, beer – please, just reach out,’” Jason says. “Ashley reached out and we were thrilled to host it.”

More than twenty pastry chefs from the Charlotte region donated baked goods, raising $3,600 for charities in Eastern North Carolina. The event was such a success they held Lovin’ From The Oven: Holiday Edition! in December at Free Range Brewing again. This time they raised $4,150 for the residents and farmers in the same region.

“Ashley has been an active voice and leader for Charlotte in the local food movement, always willing to give her time and amazing skills to promote area farms,” adds Piedmont Culinary Guild member Christy Underwood of Underwood Family Farm. “She is at the farmers market almost every Saturday, for over a decade, sourcing local ingredients for 300 East.”

Underwood appreciates how chefs like Ashley showcase local products in menu items, highlighting seasonal foods and their quality and freshness. “Three years ago, Ashley volunteered to help us with a dinner for 100 people on our farm,” she says. “The thought and creativity she put into the desserts made with our farm fresh fare were incredible!”

Matthew Krenz, former Executive Chef at The Asbury, first worked with Ashley at a local event. He was impressed with her teamwork and willingness to jump into the fray. Since then, he’s enjoyed seeing how she uses unexpected ingredients to elevate desserts.

“Ashley has a knack for taking familiar concepts and twisting them with different textures and colors,” he says. “And it’s not just the flavor or execution that stands out for Ashley, her plating style is so organic and intentional. She just has that eye for how to balance out a plate visually that is second to none in our area.”

Unique creations are what Ashley does well. Desserts at 300 East are inspired by what produce is available.

“We are super-seasonal and right now,” Ashley says. “We have butternut squash; we have sweet potatoes; we have hibiscus; we have local pears and apples.

“I think what we’re really good at here is pulling in all of the variety of local produce into desserts in ways you might not see anywhere else.”

Profile written by Vanessa Infanzon