The Sky’s the Limit

For The Commodore Club’s pastry chef, Madelyn Frank, a love of baking goes all the way back to childhood memories spent sporting a chef’s hat and baking with her mom in the kitchen.

This childhood love morphed into a teenager’s startup as Frank began selling specialty cakes through her online business to customers in her hometown of New Bern. With a relatively successful business under her belt, Frank – at 16 years old – decided it was time to make things official and pursue a job in a bakery. At the time, most of what Frank knew in the kitchen came from a combination of her mom’s instruction, cooking shows and videos on YouTube.

“I wanted to get a job in a bakery so I could learn from someone and learn different techniques,” Frank said. “So I was at my hairdresser one day and I was – you know – doing what you do as a girl, chatting with her and saying, ‘I really want to get into, a pastry shop or something around here but I don’t really see anything that is calling to me.” The hairdresser mentioned to Frank a new European-style bakery opening in town named Mayte Sweets, which definitely piqued Frank’s interest. “While I was still sitting in the chair, I found the profile and sent a message.”

At Mayte, Frank started learning the basics – making items such as tart shells and tiramisu – and eventually the owner of the business, Mayte Chavez, encouraged Frank to further her education and passion by going to France.

“The thought was that the best I could really learn here was from a French person, so why not actually go over there?” Frank said. “It’s more of a part of the culture in France, and so there’s a deeper connection. Everywhere you go over there there’s a Boulangerie or a Patisserie on every corner.” And so, Frank was off to Adage, France, for a year spent studying pastry arts at Gastronomicom Culinary School and interning at Le Beau Rivage Hotel.

Frank explains that one of the tangible takeaways from her time in France was the focus on structure and the history behind the techniques she was learning.

“In any kitchen there is always structure,” she said. “But specifically in pastry, it takes a lot of precision and detail and discipline.”

During her intensive pastry program studies, Frank spent three hours in the morning learning the French language and three hours in the afternoon learning the art of pastry.

“What was really helpful for me in learning French was actually being in the kitchen at Le Beau Rivage because there wasn’t anyone there that spoke English,” she said. “So, you’re thrown in there and you either have to speak French or be alone and get really lost.”

As her year in France was coming to a close, Frank was feeling homesick as she considered next options. She ended up in Asheville at Sweets and Seats before deciding she was “more of a beach girl” and wanted to get back to the coastline again.

She would land at the over-the-water exclusive club and restaurant The Commodore Club in Wrightsville Beach.

At the same time that Frank was looking for jobs in the Wilmington area, chef Jordan Keen was transitioning from his role at Dram Yard to The Commodore Club. Frank had been reaching out to a handful of local restaurants and chefs when she found Keen on Instagram and messaged him mere days after he accepted his new position.

Keen was in the process of building out his new team at The Commodore Club when he heard from Frank.

“I hired her pretty quickly,” Keen said. “She was living about three hours away, came down, did three desserts for me and I hired her on the spot. She’s very creative; nobody else is doing what she’s doing around here.”

While Frank had originally assumed she was messaging Keen about a potential pastry gig at Dram Yard, she quickly became excited about the prospect of The Commodore Club.

“I was really interested in the private aspect and the opportunities that come along with that and the kind of people I knew I would be serving,” she said. “But I will say for me it’s less the place and more the chef I was excited to work with because he was just so open to letting me do my own thing and that’s hard to find.”

One example of Keen giving Frank the freedom she needs to create with abandon is an in-restaurant cotton candy machine that Frank uses for her signature dish, In the Clouds. The dish is served in a glass bowl with a salted caramel base, bruleed banana, gluten-free banana crumb cake and toasted marshmallow gelato. But the real scene-stealer is the floating ball of cotton candy that is seated atop the bowl.

“I love having a unique or even interactive aspect with my dishes and really getting people involved in a different way,” she said. “I think in a lot of places it’ll be just like a slice of cheesecake with chocolate sauce underneath it, which of course tastes good. But I prefer to get people involved and provide something different. With (In the Clouds) you lift up the cotton candy, there’s a visual element, a smell, a feel; you’re really connecting with the food when it arrives at your table.”

Keen said that the bowl Frank uses for In the Clouds is also used for a caviar dish on the main menu. “One day she looked at it and said, ‘Chef, can I use this for a dessert?’” he recalled. “If you read everything on paper it’s like, ‘What?’ But it’s definitely one of her best and shows off her creative flair. Her dessert menu really brings out the fun playfulness that is a perfect way to end a dining experience here.”

The Commodore Club is hosting a pubic event (in partnership with Feast Wilmington) called Ebb + Flow on Feb. 22. The event will include live music from the Jay Killman trio and dishes from both Keen and Frank.

“This is the first time the club will be open to the public in this capacity,” Keen said. “It will be great to kind of showcase how unique this place is and give people a chance to see it.” Keen explains that there will be multiple interactive food stations at the event, including an oyster station, a ribeye station, and Frank’s liquid nitrogen ice cream station, where she’ll be actually making the ice cream in front of guests.

“I love that we’re doing this event,” Frank said. “I think it’s important for restaurants to connect with the community and get people to try new things that maybe they wouldn’t normally.”

“The goal for this event is really to give everybody here an experience that they’ve never had before,” Keen adds. “I want them to walk out and think about it the next day and the next day and the one after that.”

For more information and to purchase your tickets for Ebb + Flow, click here.