Q & A with City Bakery's Maury Rubin

The secret of City Bakery’s hot chocolate will apparently remain a secret.  At least until owner Maury Rubin is — god forbid — dead.   Ironically, Maury Rubin is an accidental baker and restaurateur. 

In fact, a two-time Emmy award winner for his work as a television sports producer and director.   But a pastry class in France changed all that. Now, there’s not only a City Bakery in New York, but LA’s got one of their own.  And we’ve got two green Birdbath Bakeries in Manhattan.

How do you go from directing television and making documentaries to pretzel croissants and pastries?  We’re not sure.  Maybe it’s the lure of the outrageously crispy chocolate chip cookies. Or the mammoth-sized Baker’s Muffin.  Or the hot chocolate

Maury Rubin is well-versed when it comes to the science of rich, molten chocolate. So much so, he’s dedicated the month of February to it, with a roster of over 25 flavors, including earl grey, passion fruit, milk chocolate, and bourbon.

This just in:  The Hot Chocolate Festival has been extended through the first two weeks of March.  Race you there. 

Single/Married/Divorced?
Married to four bakeries

What did you want to be when you grew up?
The personification of Elmer Hoffman, M.D., a surgeon who sewed up a cut in my head when I was 5 years old with a presence I’ve never forgotten.

What was your first job in food? What did you learn?
I followed my two older brothers to work at our local Baskin-Robbins in high school. By the time I started, one or the other of us had been working there for six straight years and some people referred to it as “Baskin-Rubins.”  I learned that in a crowded store on a hot summer night the view was pretty spectacular for a 16-year old boy looking out from behind an ice cream dipping cabinet while girls were pressed against the display glass trying to choose what to order. To this day, I’m still thankful there were 31 flavors.

Let’s talk about hot chocolate. What inspired you to create one of the richest, thickest, literally “melted” chocolate drinks in New York?
I was making chocolate mousse, and had an idea.

What’s the secret – we’re dying to know.
Since you mention dying, as soon as I do, you’ll know the secret [I’ve left instructions].

What made you decide to devote February to hot chocolate?
Picking February for a “festival” was an early decision I made for the bakery in a marketing hat that really mattered. It was the second year of business [1991] and the bakery was doing well, but February was dead. Once the festival caught on, it became our second busiest month of the year [behind November] and has since become our single best month all year, every year.

How did you choose the flavors?
No different than developing pastry, except that chocolate brings some built-in boundaries to the process [at least at the start]. The list of flavors is now past 25 – on one hand that seems like a large number to me – on the other hand, I started 17 years ago so it’s actually only slightly more than one flavor a year.

Which is your favorite flavor, and why?
Two: Vanilla Bean Hot Chocolate, because of what the vanilla does to the chocolate, and Bourbon Hot Chocolate, because of what the chocolate does to the Bourbon.

Do you have a least favorite (and yes you must pick one)?
There is no least favorite, but at the moment, I have vengeful feelings towards Arabian Nights Hot Chocolate, which a few days ago, absolutely owned me for the third year in a row. It’s a flavor I ad-lib each year with about six to fifteen ingredients. It’s always been a work in progress, and always somewhat elusive. It’s on the calendar only once a year. This year, the first batch I made in the morning was as good as it’s ever been, but then I lost control of it and never got it back. I spent the next nine hours chasing after it with no luck, then the next 24 hours miserable.   

Other than your own, who makes the best hot chocolate in New York?…

Wow, what an inconvenient question. Instead of actually answering that,
can’t I just admit something else deeply personal, like, I was a
bed-wetter as a child? 

You’ve won two Emmy Awards for your producing and directing! How did you get into pastry? 
It wasn’t the plan. I had a dream first job at ABC Sports, but after 5
years, I wanted to move from sports television to documentary film. I
couldn’t find a show that felt right, so I took a break and went on a
trip to France, where I took a pastry class for fun. I had never baked,
but became somewhat obsessed.

How have you been able to manage not only City Bakery New York, but City Bakery LA, Birdbath, and Build a Green Bakery?

One day at a time.  

Where did you come up with the idea of fusing a pretzel with a croissant?
I’ve developed 99% of the pastry at the bakery, and while the Pretzel
Croissant is easily the best known, truth be told, it was not my hand.
We had lent space in the kitchen to a German graphic designer who was
trying to moonlight her way into a pretzel business. Her ingredients
were side by side on the table with our different doughs. Bakers being
bakers, someone had the good sense to experiment.

What steps have you taken to make City Bakery a greener place?
We have always considered the environment in operating the business,
long before the words “global warming’ were understood. It was a quiet
pursuit. Go back more than a decade and this was not something
businesses talked about. Today, we look at every aspect of the
operation and consider it thru the lens of green. Maybe more important,
we talk about it with our customers, who I believe are engaged by it
and want the discussion. We have a range of initiatives like deliveries
by pedal-powered rickshaw, use of wind-power and eco-footprint
awareness programs for our staff, but I still don’t believe we’re doing
enough and don’t believe the food industry as a whole has shown enough
willingness or creativity here.

City Bakery has been open for 18 years. You can’t buy success like that – what’s your business model?
Caring about it, loving it, feeding it, sweating for it, losing your
mind a bit for it, over and over and over and then again one more time
the next day. Something close to that.  There is also the benefit and
blessing of longtime devoted staff who have given their everything to
City Bakery in a manner that seems out of time in today’s world. They
have been brilliant and essential.

Any plans for the future? Do tell…
There are still plenty of ideas – the feeling is there may never be
enough time to get them all in play before this is done. I’m glad my
knees and elbows still work. For the moment, that makes me think
there’s more to come.

Address: 3 W 18th St. (off of 5th Ave.)
Phone: (212) 366-1414