Dolester Miles

Last updated
Dolester Miles
Born1957
Victoria, Texas, United States
Occupation Pastry chef
Years active1982–present

Dolester "Dol" Miles (born 1957) is an American pastry chef and a three-time James Beard Award finalist. [1] Miles serves as the pastry chef at Frank Stitt's Highlands Bar and Grill in Birmingham, Alabama. Miles was named Outstanding Pastry Chef by the James Beard Foundation in May 2018. [2] [3]

Contents

Early life

Miles was born in Victoria, Texas [4] in 1957 and grew up in Bessemer, Alabama. She learned to make traditional Southern desserts like pecan pie, lemon meringue pie and peach cobbler from her mother Cora Mae. [5] Miles graduated from Wenonah High School in 1975 and attended Alabama A&M University and Lawson State Community College where she studied computer science. [4] To help pay her way through college, she began working as a cook in Homewood, Alabama.

Career

In 1982, Frank Stitt opened Highlands Bar and Grill in Birmingham. He hired Miles and her older sister Diane as cooks. Miles gradually worked her way up to executive pastry chef at the restaurant. She later moved on to making desserts for all of Stitt's restaurants, including Bottega, Bottega Cafe, and Chez Fonfon. [6]

In 2016, Miles was named a James Beard Award finalist for outstanding pastry chef. [7] She also advanced to the finals in 2017 and 2018. [1] [8] She was named Outstanding Pastry Chef by the James Beard Foundation in May 2018. [2] [3]

In 2018, Miles was the subject of "Dol", a documentary film by Ava Lowery. [9]

Her recipes have appeared in multiple publications, including Southern Living and a series of cookbooks written by Stitt. As a pastry chef, she is best known for her strawberry shortcake, lemon meringue tart and coconut pecan cake. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Key lime pie</span> American custard pie

Key lime pie is an American dessert pie. It is made of Key lime juice, egg yolks, and sweetened condensed milk. It may be served with no topping, with a meringue topping made from egg whites, or with whipped cream. Traditionally, Key Lime pie is made using a graham cracker crust. It may be made with or without baking in a pie crust or without crust. The dish is named after the small Key limes, which are more aromatic than the common Persian limes, and which have yellow juice. The filling in a Key lime pie is typically yellow because of the egg yolks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chess pie</span> Pie from the American South

Chess pie is a dessert with a filling composed mainly of flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and sometimes milk, characteristic of Southern United States cuisine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Hastings</span> American chef

Chris Hastings is the owner and executive chef of Hot & Hot Fish Club, a restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama, and was twice a finalist for the James Beard Award "Best Chef in the South" award. In 2012, Chef Hastings was the winner of this award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Silverton</span> American chef, baker, and author (born 1954)

Nancy Silverton is an American chef, baker, restaurateur, and author. The winner of the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef Award in 2014, Silverton is recognized for her role in popularizing sourdough and artisan breads in the United States.

Gale Gand is a Chicago-based pastry chef, cookbook author, television personality, and winner of the 2001 James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef. Gand was the host of the Food Network show Sweet Dreams. She was the Chef-in-Residence at Elawa Farm, in Lake Forest, Illinois. Gand is a partner and was the founding Executive Pastry Chef at Tru, a contemporary fine-dining restaurant affiliated with Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. Gand and her partners at Tru won the 2007 James Beard Foundation Award for Service. She has blogged for the Huffington Post, was a contestant on Iron Chef America in the 2006–2007 season, and was a judge on Bravo's Top Chef in 2008 for the episode Wedding Wars. Gand was also featured on the Great Chefs television program.

Emily Underhill Luchetti is an American pastry chef, cookbook author, and educator. She is a 2004 James Beard award-winner for Outstanding Pastry Chef.

Frank Stitt III is the owner and executive chef of Highlands Bar and Grill, Bottega Restaurant, Bottega Cafe, and Chez Fon Fon in Birmingham, Alabama. He was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's "Who's Who of Food and Beverage" in 2011. The foundation also named him the "Best Chef in the Southeast" in 2001 and he was a 2008 finalist for its national "Outstanding Chef" award. Highlands Bar and Grill was selected the winner of its "Outstanding Restaurant" award in 2018. The restaurant's pastry chef, Dolester Miles, was the winner of its "Outstanding Pastry Chef" award in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Yee</span> American chef, specializing in pastry

Jennifer Yee is an American chef, specializing in pastry. Born and raised in San Francisco, she worked in several pastry kitchens in some of New York's finest restaurants, including Lafayette in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan as Patissière, and The Grill in midtown Manhattan's Seagram Building, as the opening Pastry Chef, before becoming the Executive Pastry Chef for Chef Linton Hopkins' restaurants in Atlanta. Her work has been recognized by the James Beard Foundation in both New York and Atlanta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Guas</span> American chef (born 1975)

David Guas is a chef, TV personality, restaurateur and cookbook author from New Orleans, Louisiana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christina Tosi</span> American chef, author and TV personality

Christina Tosi is an American chef and cookbook author. She is founder and co-owner with Momofuku of Milk Bar and serves as its chef and chief executive officer. Food & Wine magazine included her in their 2014 list of "Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink".

Joanne Chang is an American chef and restaurant owner. She is the owner of Flour Bakery in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts and James Beard Foundation Award winner for Outstanding Baker, 2016. In announcing the award, Devra First of the Boston Globe wrote that Chang was "on her way to becoming the Susan Lucci of the Beards." She is known for her sticky buns. In 2021, Chang appeared as a judge on Netflix's Baking Impossible.

Zac Young is an American pastry chef and TV personality. He has been featured on various baking shows on Food Network and the Cooking Channel, most notably on Top Chef: Just Desserts and Unique Sweets. He also appeared as a guest judge on baking competition show Nailed It! on Netflix, Food Network's Halloween Baking Championship, and Food Network's Chopped.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pie in American cuisine</span> History and cultural significance of pies in American cuisine

Pie in American cuisine evolved over centuries from savory game pies with inedible free-standing crusts. When sugar became more widely available women made simple sweet fillings with a handful of basic ingredients. By the 1920s and 1930s there was growing consensus that cookbooks needed to be updated for the modern electric kitchen. New appliances, recipes and convenience food ingredients changed the way Americans made iconic dessert pies like key lime pie, coconut cream pie and banana cream pie.

Stella Parks is an American pastry chef and food writer based in Kentucky. She has worked in various Lexington-area restaurants, notably Table 310, and was a longtime contributor to Serious Eats. Parks received a James Beard Foundation Award in 2018 for her bestselling cookbook BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts.

The James Beard Foundation Awards are annual awards presented by the James Beard Foundation to recognize culinary professionals in the United States. The awards recognize chefs, restaurateurs, authors and journalists each year, and are generally scheduled around James Beard's May birthday.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheryl Day</span> American pastry chef, baker and author

Cheryl Day is a baker and author, who is owner of Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah, Georgia and co-founder of Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice. She is the author of two best-selling cookbooks, written with her husband Griff Day. In 2015 she was a semi-finalist James Beard Awards in the category of Outstanding Baker.

The first season of Top Chef: Just Desserts was broadcast on Bravo. It featured 12 pastry chefs fighting to win the title of Top Chef.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claudia Fleming</span> American dessert chef

Claudia Fleming is an American dessert chef. She grew up in Long Island, New York, and initially pursued ballet. She instead became a professional dessert chef, releasing a book entitled The Last Course. The book attained a cult following, as well as critical praise. She has been featured on Beat Bobby Flay, Chopped, Barefoot Contessa, and Top Chef: Just Desserts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atlantic Beach pie</span> Lemon curd pie

Atlantic Beach pie is a type of lemon curd pie which uses a saltine crust and whipped cream topping sprinkled with salt.

References

  1. 1 2 Carlton, Bob (March 14, 2018). "Alabama restaurant earns 10th straight James Beard nomination". The Birmingham News.
  2. 1 2 Hagedorn, David (October 22, 2018). "How a self-taught pastry chef in Alabama became one of the best in the nation". Washington Post.
  3. 1 2 Severson, Kim (May 29, 2018). "An Alabama Chef and Her Beloved Desserts Hit the Big Time". New York Times.
  4. 1 2 Romero, Catherine (4 August 2013). "FACES of Birmingham: Dolester Miles". StyleBlueprint.
  5. ↑ Hilliard, Emily (April 29, 2013). "Give Me Some Sugar: Dolester Miles". Southern Foodways Alliance. Archived from the original on March 21, 2018. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
  6. ↑ Cole, Jennifer. "Five Southern Kitchen Magicians". Southern Living.
  7. ↑ Mondry, Sydney (April 28, 2016). "Meet Dolester Miles, the Queen of Southern Desserts". InStyle. Archived from the original on March 21, 2018. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
  8. ↑ West, Ty (March 15, 2017). "Highlands once again earns finalist nods in James Beard Awards". Birmingham Business Journal.
  9. 1 2 Carlton, Bob (March 1, 2018). "Alabama pastry chef Dolester Miles featured in new documentary film". The Birmingham News.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.