After several years of working in various restaurant and educational kitchens, Chef Risa Magid Boyer realized that the entire dessert experience could be elevated. She imagined a restaurant that put sweets at the center of the menu with healthy, seasonal savory food to complement.

​Risa trained at the Culinary Institute of America, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in culinary management and an associate’s degree in baking and pastry arts. She has interned at Park Avenue in NYC and Pink Cake Box in Denville, NJ. Risa has worked in NYC restaurants Sweet Revenge and Armani Ristorante, as well as De Novo European Pub in Montclair, NJ and Finale in Boston, MA. Most recently, she has been a pastry instructor and resident chef at Sur La Table and the owner of Pastries by Risa, a small specialty cake business.

​Risa was born into a family of sweets and artists. Her Grammie was a talented cake decorator, her Grandfather’s family owned bakeries in Poland for many generations, and her great-grandfather was a late-blooming artist. The tradition continues with today’s generation. In the mid-1980’s, Risa’s parents founded a retail chocolate business in New Jersey and today they are investors in ChloeFineArts, a San Francisco based art gallery. Early in Risa’s career, she studied graphic arts; her passion for art eventually led her to designing desserts.

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Vanillamore is a beautiful expression of many generations of passion for the Magid family.