Pastry chef changes at Butcher & Bee

Pastry chef Emily Cookson has decided to leave Butcher & Bee. The chef, who worked at Charleston Grill for five years prior, answered a want ad last spring and took over bread and pastry production at The Bee in May.

At the time Cookson told CP that she’d been ready for a change from the fine dining grind. “I’ve been interested in working in the kind of place that I like to eat. I love fine dining, especially The Grill, but that’s a once or twice a year kind of outing. In Charleston, Butcher & Bee is the kind of food I like to enjoy,” she said.

In an email to CP this week, however, Cookson says she’s realized, “I really enjoy working with everyone there, but ultimately, it is not the job for me.” Cookson will stay on through the second week of December in order to transition new Pastry Chef Jeffrey Stoneberger.

Stoneberger previously worked at McCrady’s around 2010 before departing to consult on a few restaurants. According to his bio, he was then recruited to work at Saison in San Francisco.

A return to the East Coast later found him working for chef and entrepreneur Bryan Voltaggio where Stoneberger managed and developed multiple restaurants in Voltaggio’s Maryland and D.C. empire (Volt, Lunchbox, Family Meal, Aggio). Stoneberger most recently oversaw Aggio in Washington DC.

Randi Weinstein, Butcher & Bee’s events director, says Stoneberger’s got a lot of talent and certainly a good pedigree. “He is very much into more of a French type of pastry background,” she adds.

Butcher & Bee currently supplies seven local restaurants with bread, along with their own kitchen and The Daily’s, and the pastry chef job requires the chef handle all of those accounts plus desserts. That means arriving sometimes as early as 3:30 a.m. “We’ll see how that works out for him,” adds Weinstein.

As for Cookson’s future plans, she didn’t comment, but Weinstein says the B&B team wishes her nothing but the best.