As anyone who’s watched her conquer holiday cakes on Netflix baking show “Sugar Rush Christmas” can attest, Sabrina Courtemanche’s pastry prowess shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Courtemanche, the longtime head pastry chef at Fort Lauderdale’s Riverside Hotel, won $10,000 on the competition series for her spiced vanilla cupcakes spiked with cherry mulled wine. But what truly clinched her victory was a red-and-green velvet cake stuffed with cutout cake pop Christmas trees, and crowned with what judges called a “dreamy” coquito cream-cheese frosting.
Now Courtemanche has parlayed the crazy highs of “Sugar Rush” into her first bakeshop, New River Cafe & Bakery, which soft-opened in mid-January a block south of Las Olas Boulevard. At her 2,200-square-foot bakery, the native of Ontario, Canada, crafts decadent desserts like gooey cinnamon buns glazed with bourbon-caramel cream cheese, along with snickers brownies, Nutella-stuffed cookies, and coconut passionfruit dessert jars.
“My view now is a lot different than what it was inside the hotel,” Courtemanche tells the South Florida Sun Sentinel, sounding perhaps too modest for a chef whose bakery gazes out over Fort Lauderdale’s pristine New River.
Her New River Cafe & Bakery occupies a storefront around the corner from Riverside Hotel, a macaron’s throw from a Fort Lauderdale Water Taxi stop, and flanked by the city’s fleet of towering new condo high-rises. Courtemanche plans to throw a grand-opening party once Las Olas Tunnel Top Park wraps up construction later this year, she says.
Inside, the 49-seat bakery is reminiscent of a beach-swept cafe, with washed-out grays and teals that contrast Courtemanche’s display cases of bright buttercreams and berry parfaits. The bakery is owned by The Las Olas Co., which operates the 87-year-old hotel, its in-house restaurant Wild Sea Las Olas, and off-premises Boathouse at the Riverside.
This means that while Courtemanche is the face behind New River Cafe, she’s still the hotel’s full-time pastry chef. Lately, she flits back and forth between the kitchens at Riverside Hotel and the bakery, handling wedding banquets, private dining and desserts, commanding a staff of seven pastry cooks and bakers.
If anything, her workload has doubled — not that she’s complaining.
“You should’ve seen me the last few weeks. I was once in my work uniform almost 24 hours straight,” Courtemanche says, with a laugh. “But they’ve given me so much creative freedom with this place. It’s a mirror image of the bakery I would’ve opened if I had the independent financing to open it myself. Everything that I want is pretty much at my disposal.”
Courtemanche, of course, never imagined affording a bakery off Fort Lauderdale’s snazziest restaurant row. Raised in the small town of Espanola, Ontario, Courtemanche honed her baking know-how for six years at a family-run Italian bakery, Regency, but eventually learned fancier desserts as a pastry chef at a touristy resort in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a border town next to Niagara Falls.
The allure of sandy beaches and palm trees drove her and her husband to Fort Lauderdale in 2013 and, several months later, Riverside Hotel hired her in January 2014. When hospitality businesses struggled during the pandemic, the hotel laid off every pastry chef save Courtemanche. To tempt more hotel foot traffic, she started a side hustle selling dessert-of-the-month subscription boxes, where customers picked up to-go packages filled with surprise treats like Nutella brownies.
Courtemanche sold so many dessert boxes that Mike Weymouth, president of The Las Olas Co. – which owns multiple buildings along Las Olas Boulevard — asked her to start a brand-new bakery.
“It wasn’t really ever on my radar to open a bakery, because I knew it was so much work,” she says. “We’re not just opening a bakery but also integrating the whole production of the hotel along with the bakery. Still, we’re getting so busy every day, and it’s all worth it.”
Courtemanche bakes all breads in-house, including stuffed focaccia sandwiches ($7-$10) made with chicken pesto and pastrami and swiss. There are also ham-and-bacon quiches ($8) along with breakfast buns ($4-$5) made with soft Japanese milk bread filled with cheddar cheese and bacon.
For sweeter tooths, there’s Key lime and berry crumble tarts ($6), guava-cheese bread puddings ($7), Nutella-stuffed cookies ($4) and muffins ($3). Coffees, espressos, macchiatos and cappuccinos ($2-$4) are also available.
New River Cafe & Bakery is at 420 SE Sixth Ave., Fort Lauderdale. Visit NewRiverCafeandBakery.com or call 954-377-5500.
