Antonio Bachour Steps Away From Bachour Bakery + Bistro

The jet-setting Miami pastry chef who enjoys a global following thanks to his intricate, eye-popping pastries, viennoiserie, and entremets is leaving the Brickell restaurant that bears his name. "I sold my part," Antonio Bachour says. "I made it a franchise for them, and they're paying me a royalty fee."

The buyer is Bachour's partner and the head of the restaurant's savory side, Henry Hané, who trained for three years at the Michelin-starred Miramar in Llançà on Spain's northeastern coast and previously manned the stoves at Giorgio Rapicavoli's Eating House.

The split is more than just a business deal. Seemingly from the first days after Bachour Bakery + Bistro opened, Hané and Bachour clashed over how the business should be run. There was also Bachour's whirlwind schedule, which pulls him to various corners of the globe to lead pastry- and candy-making classes.

"Everyone can say what to do from the outside, and in reality, they're not here 100 hours a week dealing with the problems, fixing all the problems, and running a restaurant," Hané says. "The quality is going to remain the same. We're still going to be a high-end bakery."

Bachour's celebrity, the one that garners thousands of likes on his Instagram posts and lured budding pastry chefs from around the world to work for free inside the bakery, also became an issue. Following an October New Times cover story about the bakery, Hané voiced dismay that so much of the article was focused on Bachour though the two enjoyed equal ownership.
After all, Hané is responsible for savory dishes such as the butifarra sandwich ($15), which deploys thick slices of roast turkey marinated in cilantro, roasted, grilled, and then piled onto a spongy bun with an anticucho aioli, whipped sweet potato, and salsa criolla. The menu has also been expanded to include a lamb shank ($19) with hummus, tzatziki, cashews, and a sherry caramel, alongside arroz con pollo ($16) that swaps the rice for pearled barley and is dressed with olives and a sofrito aioli.

Still, one must wonder whether the whole operation was set up to implode when Bachour and Hané agreed to bill the place under the pastry chef's name.

"It's like when bands break up and they cite irreconcilable differences," says investor Javier Ramirez, who also sold his stake in the place. "Antonio and Henry weren’t getting along as the best of partners."

Nevertheless, Bachour's pastries will still be sold here for at least two years under the agreement established as part of the split. It's unclear how long the name will stick, though. Bachour says two years; Hané says both the pastries and the moniker could remain indefinitely.

In the meantime, Bachour has showed few signs of slowing. Though he stopped posting pictures from the bakery on social media about two weeks ago, he has shared a flurry of photos of his work from the pastry kitchen at the St. Regis Bal Harbour while also planning bakeries at Miami International Airport and the Citadel in Little River.