Mitchell Moore is committed to keeping Campbell’s traditions alive. Photo by Julian Rankin
The memory that comes immediately to my mind is a little Greek bakery in Tarpon Springs, Fla., when I was about 12 on a family vacation. I stood before a case of sweets and baked goods each day in a seaside enclave of Mediterranean sounds and smells settled by Greek immigrants long ago. On the last night, we stopped by the bakery again, and my mom bought me the biggest piece of cake I've ever seen, covered in icing and chocolate shavings.
I can still taste it.
Pastry is memory. Walk into Campbell's Bakery, and you can experience exactly what I'm talking about. Your guide is owner Mitchell Moore, who took the reins of the bakery in 2011 after what seemed to be an endless cycle of new ownership and failed attempts to recapture what Louis Campbell created in the 1960s when he opened the original storefront.
"I want to restore Campbell's to where it should be in everybody's mind," Moore explained.
"I want you to see it the way somebody who is 70 years old sees it. As that place where your kids came in, and they got the cake pops every day and got all their birthday cakes from here, and they always got the tea cakes here, because nobody does them as good as us."
As we talked, he mixed ingredients for a batch of chocolate chip cookies; all the others sold out earlier in the day. Behind him were two immense vintage cast-iron ovens. I was struck with the memory of an illustration from Kipling's "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin," and the Parsee baker who lives on an island with only his knife and iron cooking-stove and eats nothing but cake.
"It's all about tradition. It's a memory," he said. "I'm helping families form new traditions. Because what are their traditions going to be? Going to Starbucks? Is that a tradition? It is, but should it be?"
Moore is passing on the lessons he has learned from a life well lived to another crop of future culinary technicians. The Campbell's Bakery internship program, a word-of-mouth apprenticeship that has taken root in the kitchen, teaches students about the finer points of baking.
"The teaching aspect really helps me to focus on what I'm doing," Moore said. "It's OK to make mistakes, just make new ones. And if they're learning, they tend to make new mistakes. And I enjoy it."
One of the former interns, Kathryn Gunderson, recently began training at the Culinary Institute of America in California. A current intern, Kelsey Steen, plans to attend culinary school in Boston. And Moore recently made a phone call to one of his own mentors to tell him he'd been extended an invitation to cook at the James Beard House in New York. The pride in the successes of one's pupils keeps coming back around like a Lazy Susan, generation to generation.
"I don't want to be known as the baker in town who drives a Corvette," Moore told me. "Of course, I'm not a Chevy guy, so I never would. But I don't want to be that guy. It's not about how much money are we making. I could make a lot more money if I used cake mix. But it's not what we do. It's not why we're here. If you're gonna do it, do it."
A perfect symbol of the evolution of the bakery was parked outside. A black 1951 Ford Step Van, with painted flames from the previous owner, will soon be renovated and restored to become the Campbell's Care-a-van, a mobile delivery system of sweets and treats.
The thing about the golden age of Americana is that as we get further away from those post-war glory years, there are fewer people who were actually alive to remember it. But that's the true nature of nostalgia; based on feelings, not facts. Moore understands the distinction. He isn't trying to recreate a facsimile of a long-lost time, but rather, to re-engineer an experience, combining that mid-century family-friendly optimism with dashes of contemporary hipster and southern sweet.
The mixing bowl rumbled as the chocolate-chip cookie dough came together. "And you know, this is a handmade product, so I don't mind selling out every once in a while," Moore said, standing over the mixer.
"You sell out, but you never sell out," I said.
"Exactly."
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