baked founders

We like to think of ourselves as dessert experts; the kind of people blessed with a highly (almost holy) developed sense of taste and smell. Between our collective, we have eaten thousands of cakes and muffins and brownies (sometimes for dessert, sometimes as our only meal) and we have agonized over our dessert menu to the point of absurdity. This little storefront is our ode to the perfect bakery and we call it, simply, baked.

Baked is owned and operated by Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito.

history

Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito met at a glitzy, high profile ad agency in 2001 and generally kept their distance from one another. Renato went on to open his own small web boutique and Matt opened Chocolate Bar, a hip, little chocolate shop and cafe in the West Village. Renato approached Matt about using his company to design a website for Chocolate Bar, and Matt agreed. A friendship emerged from this work arrangement. After quite a few years in the web biz, Renato decided to change gears and try to achieve his dream of opening a coffeeshop. For experience, he worked as manager at a small East Village cafe.

One day, Matt asked Renato if he would be interested in opening up a bakery and coffeeshop in Brooklyn. 'Hell yes!', he said. Pooling their earnings together along with some financial help from investor Rafi Avramovitz, Baked opened on the shores of Red Hook in January of 2005. They gutted an abandoned storefront church, added a few ovens, mixers and a coffee machine and turned 359 Van Brunt Street into a dessert destination. Baked has received some really great press (Oprah’s Favorite Things, Martha Stewart Show, Food and Wine Magazine, just to name a few) and won some really fantastic accolades (French Culinary Institute’s best recipe, Citysearch’s Best Bakery) and would be more than overjoyed to share their desserts with you. Matt & Nato just finished thier first book together, Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, coming out in October 2008.