After working with top chefs around the world, this rising star baker returned to Phoenix

Although he is makes the pastries for some of the best restaurants in Phoenix, sells his wares at farmers markets and was named a semifinalist for best pastry chef in the country by the James Beard Foundation this year, Mark Chacon always thought he'd become a professional violinist.

He played for years, and moved to Arizona to continue his studies at ASU. However, injuries put a stop to his dream. At 21, he gave up playing.

So, he switched gears. After dipping his toes into the food world by writing for a Scottsdale food magazine after college, Chacon decided he wanted to dive deeper.

A couple of chef friends recommended against expensive culinary school and suggested real world experience instead, so Chacon got a job at Whole Foods selling cheese and chocolate. There, he picked up baking as a hobby.

"I had this crappy little apartment with like a bad air conditioning unit, and I would stay up all night baking so that I could not heat up the place too much," he said.

He transferred to the bakery department and learned how to decorate cakes. Then, while he was working in Phoenix, a group of friends with a band and a van told him they were heading west. They asked if Chacon wanted to tag along. Little did he know, that trip to San Francisco would change his entire trajectory.

"We were staying in the Mission right across the street from Tartine Bakery. And I just had never really seen anything quite like it," he said of the world famous spot. "I don't know, something just sort of clicked and I thought, 'Oh, I will wait in this line for these pastries forever. I don't care.'"

Working with the masters

Chacon transferred from Whole Foods in Phoenix to a location in Oakland and decided he'd like to stage, or intern, at Tartine. For nine months, he went to the bakery four to five days a week to try and convince the bakery manager to bring him on.

"She was like, No, you can’t, you don't know anything," Chacon said. "And finally, one day she goes, 'Oh my God, you again'. She's like, fine, all right, fine. You can come and work for free. But if you mess anything up, then you're out of here."

He staged there for a year and a half, learning the skills to project him forward. From there, he worked at acclaimed chef Alice Waters' Cafe Fanny and through personal connections, landed a gig staging at another of her restaurants, Chez Panisse, one of the most important contemporary American food restaurants in the country. After a few months working for free, he was at last hired onto the pastry team.

"It was a real push for me," Chacon said. "You know, like at the time, it was extremely difficult. There were some times of, you know, crying in the walk-in and usually I wasn't alone."

The restaurant work demanded perfection and Chacon strove to keep up. His time there also taught him to think about taste and flavor over all else. He'd spend hours in the walk-in refrigerator feeling every fruit to determine exactly when the fresh produce was at its best. While extremely tough, the job was also rewarding and "helped build me," Chacon said.

His lessons in violin inspired a love for teaching and while in the Bay Area, Chacon also worked with The Bread Project, a non-profit that teaches refugees and formerly-incarcerated people to bake.

He continued to bake for top-notch bakeries in San Francisco including James Beard Award-winning B Patisserie. He got a job at a chocolatier in Emeryville. He developed recipes for a specialty market in Oakland.

Then, after hustling hard for over ten years in California, he decided to come back to Phoenix.

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A rising star baker returns to Phoenix

Upon his return, Chacon decided to follow his love for teaching and started working at the Arizona Culinary Institute. There, he taught students all the skills he had learned on his own. He met a talented student, Juan Carlos Mendoza, who goes by Charlie, and made a mental note of his skill. Later, Mendoza would become Chacon's sous chef at Chaconne Patisserie.

But before he'd really settled in Arizona, Chacon was whisked off to Copenhagen for the trip of a lifetime. A friend and fellow trainee from his days at B Patisserie called. She had been tapped to lead the baking team at Hart Bageri and she needed his help.

Hart Bageri was a new project from Richard Hart, the former lead baker at Tartine, and René Redzepi, the world renowned chef and co-owner of the three-Michelin star restaurant Noma.

When his friend called to ask if he'd fly out, the obvious answer was "absolutely," Chacon said.

Together, they worked for a few weeks to perfect croissant dough, figuring it out in Noma's glass enclosed test kitchen. It's an experience Chacon won't soon forget.

"That's maybe my biggest accomplishment, to say that I was standing in a room with René Redzepi with other colleagues, and he was eating my food and commenting on it positively," Chacon said.

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Starting Chaconne Patisserie

After his life changing trip to Copenhagen, Chacon returned to Phoenix and threw himself into his work. During the pandemic, he gave up teaching classrooms filled with students and focused on his own personal ventures.

Hart connected him with Chris Bianco and Chacon started working for the famous pizza chef, making pastries and desserts for his Phoenix restaurants. When the desserts started getting popular, Chacon hired his former student, Mendoza as an assistant.

As the demand continued to grow, Bianco suggested Chacon strike out on his own.

"He was very much the catalyst. He was very much the person who encouraged me to do my own thing," Chacon said.

So he rented space from Futuro Coffee in downtown Phoenix and started selling his pastries directly to customers and to restaurants including Pizzeria Bianco, Pane Bianco, Futuro, Bones Aftermarket, the Heard Museum Coffee Cantina, Hakirí Coffee Bus, Sottise and, most recently, Bacanora.

In late 2021, he moved into his own space, a tiny, 200 square foot kitchen inside a cloud kitchen concept on Highland Avenue.

"I think I can't get more than one and a half or two fingers between any piece of equipment on that one wall. But it worked out just great. We have everything that we need to really get going here," Chacon said.

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A surprising James Beard Award nod

While Chacon had his head down, focusing on starting his business, adding accounts and baking all hours of the day and night, something extraordinary happened.

Cassie Shortino, the former chef at Tratto messaged Chacon.

"She said 'congratulations chef, you really have really earned this.'" he recalled, remembering being confused, wondering what she meant.

Then she told him, he had been named a semifinalist for the James Beard Awards.

"I felt like I was going to throw up," he said. "I reached out to her and I was like, Are you saying that I'm a James Beard person? Like a semifinalist? I just sort of fell apart a little bit."

This year, Chacon didn't make it to the finalist round. But now he's got a taste for the competition.

"It's an honor that we're a semifinalist this year. And you know, if we ever are again, it'll be an honor then. And if we're not, well, we just want to keep on keeping on," Chacon said. "But now, do I want to be a finalist? Yeah. Do I want to win? Yeah."

What's next for one of the top bakers in Phoenix

Along with striving for the James Beard Awards, Chacon has big plans for the future. He's working with chef Rene Andrade of Bacanora to create new desserts that compliment the Mexican flavors on the menu.

He's also adding more accounts and stands at more farmers markets, after starting to sell at the Uptown Market just three weekends earlier.

"The first week that we went, it really did take a lot out of me," Chacon said. He explained that it's hard to know how much to bring. The options are either bring too much and have waste or don't bring enough and risk looking under prepared. He settled on over prepared and baked night and day to create pastries for the market.

"I think I was awake for like 40 hours," Chacon said. "The first market was rocky. I forgot a couple of things. I felt discombobulated."

But then he realized, while he is extremely critical of himself, everyone else is just happy to see a new vendor with pastries. Customers have even started obsessing over his cream cheese Danishes, he said, after he decided he could improve on the Starbucks classic.

"The next week I was like, I got this. And then this last week, I just thought, yep, we're gelling into a little rhythm, I feel good about this," he said.

Next up, he's looking to expand to the Old Town Scottsdale, downtown Phoenix or Gilbert markets. Beyond that, he sees something in the fast-casual realm in his future.

"I've worked at some really fancy places, but I'm just not that fancy a person," he said, laughing and pointing to his love of Starbucks coffee. "I have really high standards for pastry, but I really love the fast casual realm."

Until then, we'll continue enjoying his buttery, flaky pastries at cafes and markets around town, courtesy of his bakery. Named Chaconne after the Bach violin piece widely regarded as the pinnacle of a soloists repertoire, it ties together his name with his love of music and baking. Although now, the oven is his instrument and pastries are the melody.

Details: 720 W. Highland Ave, Phoenix. 480-330-6006, chaconnepatisserie.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why globe-trotting Mark Chacon is one of the best bakers in Phoenix