Bananas foster, the dramatic flambéed dessert born in 1951 at Brennan’s in New Orleans, remains far and away the restaurant’s most popular dish. The kitchen goes through cases of bananas every week, slicing them a specific way to fit the bowl the dessert comes in. That leaves a lot of extra banana pieces. Kris Padalino, who became the executive chef this spring, wanted to find a use for them. She was also looking for a new dessert for her fall menu.
She landed on a winner: banana upside-down cake. Essentially a sturdy but tender version of banana bread topped with a caramelly mix of bananas, butter, and brown sugar, the cake is fancy enough for a dinner party—especially paired with a scoop of vanilla ice cream like the restaurant’s beloved dessert. But it’s also a perfect kitchen-counter cake for snacking or even for breakfast.
Padalino didn’t start out wanting to be a chef. She graduated from high school early and was studying chemistry and math in California with plans to go into medicine when she realized she was miserable. She comes from a military family with Italian roots on her mother’s side. “There has always been that sense of cooking as a grounding point for me,” she says. So she signed up for classes at Le Cordon Bleu and crammed four years of training into nine months.
She started as a pastry chef, a skill that landed her a job at Brennan’s nine years ago. “Coming to New Orleans, which had its own cuisine, was challenging,” she says. “I didn’t know anything about it except that it was full of fat and full of flavor.” But she made her mark with creative ideas that respected tradition, working her way up to executive chef.
Padalino knew she couldn’t touch the restaurant’s most famous dish. “If you come to New Orleans, you are going to come to Brennan’s for bananas Foster,” she says. She instead used it for inspiration, echoing the dessert’s caramelized bananas, minus the glugs of rum and banana liqueur. “You don’t have to cook the sugar and butter into a smooth caramel,” she says. “I like that because it’s easier, and it adds a little crunchy caramelized candied topping.”
Before baking, the butter-and-sugar mixture gets poured into the bottom of the pan, followed by sliced bananas. Batter tops it all. When the cake is done, you flip it over onto a serving platter. The result is a beautiful marriage between a decadent New Orleans restaurant dessert and a home-cook staple. “Every household has probably made banana bread,” Padalino says. “So this kind of puts two iconic things together.”
MEET THE CHEF: Kris Padalino
Hometown: Hollywood, Florida
How to improve your baking: “Pick something that is approachable and that you’re interested in to start. It’s all about building your confidence. You might not get it on the first go, but just keep practicing.”
Management style: Padalino has worked in kitchens with demanding chefs who barked out orders. She does things differently. “I came to realize people want to be heard and want to be seen. My approach is ‘I’ll hear you out.’”
Favorite New Orleans sandwich: The fried shrimp po’boy at Verti Marte, in the French Quarter. “It’s just the sloppiest thing.”
