An excerpt from The New York Times -
A Pie Shop on Chicago’s South Side Serves More Than Dessert
With her first brick-and-mortar bakery, Justice of the Pies, the pastry chef Maya-Camille Broussard focuses on creativity — and inclusivity for people with disabilities.
By Kayla Stewart - Reporting From Chicago
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| The pastry chef Maya-Camille Broussard has opened a new bakery in Avalon Park on the South Side of Chicago. Credit...Taylor Glascock for The New York Times |
The South Side of Chicago brims with inimitable African American culture and history, and the pastry chef Maya-Camille Broussard is adding her brand of sweetness to the place where she was born and raised. In June, Ms. Broussard opened the first brick-and-mortar store of her longtime delivery and wholesale pie business, Justice of the Pies.
The shop, in a former dentist’s office in Avalon Park, one of the South Side’s many historic, predominantly African American neighborhoods, serves Ms. Broussard’s inventive pies and pastries, such as her calling cards — a blue cheese praline pear pie and a strawberry basil Key lime pie — along with unorthodox items like her salted caramel peach pie and a deep-dish chilaquiles quiche.
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| One of her signature desserts, strawberry basil Key lime pie, is available at the bakery. Credit...Taylor Glascock for The New York Times |
Ms. Broussard, who lost 75 percent of her hearing in a childhood accident, may be the industry’s most prominent hard-of-hearing Black pastry chef. She has gained a following for her pies through social media, pop-ups and appearances on the Netflix competition show “Bake Squad.” “I realized that being a member of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community actually gave me a superpower,” she said, “and that superpower includes a heightened sense of smell and taste.”
