Jet City Beignet wants you to enjoy some sweet treats
Tue, 05/12/2020
If you have ever been to New Orleans you know the city is famous for a few things including jazz, the resiliency of their people and cajun cuisine. But one export has been elusive. The Beignet. If you've never had one it is the French term for a pastry made from deep fried choux dough. Choux contains only butter, flour, water and eggs whose moisture when deep fried creates an exceptionally light puffy pastry shell.
But for Greg and Tiffany (no last names for now) Seattle was lacking a truly high quality source of this southern favorite. Hence their new Pop Up on Sundays at 4611 36th Ave SW, Jet City Beignet. In addition to selling the sweet treats directly they also manufacture their signature beignet dough and sell it frozen for people to make at home. To order yours for pickup on Sunday visit their website at https://www.jetcitybeignet.com/
The duo is highly community oriented so these pop ups are not just solo efforts. These are collaborative pop-ups where they offer beignets paired with a product from another West Seattle business to get them in front of a wider audience and offer their customers some variety. Greg explained "So far we have teamed up with Seola Bees in Arbor Heights and Hot Chocolat in the Junction.
This week we are doing a pop-up featuring West Seattle-based Seattle Sorbets (details on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Jet-City-Beignet-108858557327839/) and we have plans in the works with Northwest of Texas BBQ, Pot Pie Factory, Sifted Tea and Full Tilt Ice Cream."
Greg said, "We started as a mobile beignet booth before the COVID crisis and were booked for several markets and festivals, but since those have all been canceled or postponed we (as so many other businesses) have had to get creative. We never had a chance to get out there in front of folks, so now we are working angles to promote ourselves."
Tiffany said, "We love New Orleans food (especially beignets). Seattle has very few beignet options and yet everybody loves them, so we took it upon ourselves to come up with a delicious signature recipe and bring them to the PNW. The response has been phenomenal. People LOVE our beignets...they're really good."
Greg hails from San Diego, CA and moved to Finland in 2015. Tiffany is from Salt Lake City, UT and moved to Seattle in 2000.
While Greg was living in Finland he came to Seattle for work and ended up staying a block away from Tiffany. They met on a West Seattle stairway and fell in love almost immediately. They were married 6 weeks later.
With their sights set on a new future together, they talked about the possibility of opening their own business. It soon became obvious that the universe was nudging them through another door together.
One night, a conversation turned to their mutual love for New Orleans and its food culture, and...beignets. In the spirit of seizing opportunity and following their hearts, they combined Greg’s love of travel (and an idea for a secret ingredient he picked up in Finland) with Tiffany’s science background and love of baking. They experimented with many flavors and ingredients not found in traditional beignets.
After several months and eating LOTS of beignets, they landed on exactly the taste they were looking for.
The couple's plans for the future include potentially opening a food truck or trailer within the next year, and eventually have a permanent cafe/brick and mortar.
But for now they said, "We want to focus on getting ourselves out there while helping to promote and support our fellow small businesses through these crazy times - a thriving and tight-knit community is very important to us. That's where the pop-ups come in. Sometimes it will be just us, but we are actively reaching out and collaborating with all sorts of other food and beverage artists, because we believe it will add variety to our pop-ups and get other businesses in front of a wider audience - keeping this amazing West Seattle culture vibrant."
Greg is a former Rocker in many a metal band too. Check out Sanity's Void