Meet Turin-born Stefania Martucci, now creating desserts at the Tallahassee restaurant
Stefania Martucci is the new pastry chef at Kool Beanz Cafe, giving her the chance to share her love of baking cakes, tarts, pies and other delectable desserts at the landmark Tallahassee restaurant.
“Pastry is my passion,” Stefania said, who started working at Kool Beanz the week of Feb. 17.
Martucci follows chef Sylvia Gould, who decided to leave Kool Beanz Cafe in January to pursue another chapter in her life.
Stefania Martucci holding one of her desserts, a three-chocolate mousse cake, at Kool Beanz Cafe. Photo / Kool Beanz Top dessert photo: Stefania’s gluten-free tart filled with vanilla rice, caramel crémeux and white chocolate ganache. Photo / Stefania
“I’m so honored,” Stefania said. “I never met Sylvia, but I’ve had her desserts and they were amazing.”
When she found out that Kool Beanz Cafe now needed a new pastry chef, she decided to take a chance and talk with Keith Baxter.
“Stefania found us,” said Keith Baxter, chef/owner of Kool Beanz Cafe, at 921 Thomasville Rd., “She made a few desserts for us, and she knocked the ball out of the park.”
“Stefania brings her own style, ” Keith said. “She’s the real deal.”
Stefania’s dessert menu this week included a mango-pistachio tartlett with a pistachio cookie, mango-passion fruit confit, pistachio crémeux, Moroccan-style almond cake, yogurt and white chocolate mousse and a coffee-licorice mousse cake.
Pears poached in port
“Keith is giving me the chance to do what I want,” Stefania said. “Tonight, I’ll add a chocolate cake made with pears which have been poached in port wine and add a cinnamon cream.”
In her hometown of Turin, Italy, Stefania attended a pastry academy. She enhanced her skills at various jobs, including a year as an assistant gelato maker. Customers may be seeing homemade gelato as a garnish on desserts. Fingers crossed!
Summers in Ibiza
A highlight in her career, she said, was spending three summers as a pastry chef at an Italian restaurant on the lovely Spanish island of Ibiza. “My brother lives there, so I could work and the kids could stay with their cousins.”
A mother of three, Stefania came to Tallahassee in 2021 to join her husband, Andrea De Giorgi, an archaeologist and professor of classics at FSU.
They had been making their lives work by long distance but Stefania said when her daughter finished high school it was the perfect time to move here.
Stefania Martucci had been making lots of scrumptious desserts and savory dishes for her home baking business, Photo / Smartucci
Since arriving, Stefania has been a home baker, selling her pastries and savory dishes at farmers’ markets and through her website, Smartucci. I ordered some pumpkin and chocolate tarts from Stefania years ago and they were delicious.
For the enthusiastic chef, creating pastry is magical. “I’m so excited,” she told Tallahassee Table. “I’m super happy.”
