An architect recently opened a dessert cafe in Long Island City that uses 3-D printing technology to help create signature sweets. NY1’s Tanya Klich filed the following report.
Architect Peter Zaharatos was a lead designer of the Second Avenue Subway line and the College Point Police Academy. But these days he’s working on smaller, sweeter projects.
He founded Sugarcube in Long Island City on a unique premise: "If you take an architect and now give him chocolate to work with, what can you do if you marry these two different fields?"
Zaharatos opened the dessert cafe in February, where he draws on his architectural skills to create candy with complex designs. He sketches designs then uses his printer to create molds.
"I basically create my objects in three-d using pure geometry, the idea that I'm dealing with metaphoric ideas or symbolic ideas," said Zaharatos.
He says each chocolate bar carries a message or tells a story. Some even tell Greek myths. For instance, one focuses on the tale about the god Apollo and Cassandra: ”He basically twisted around her words so no one understood her. So the idea of the tile is, by itself, it doesn't have much meaning. But when you align it with another tile it basically completes a pattern,” explained Zaharatos.
Once he constructs the mold, he works with renowned pastry chef Mauricio Santelice.
"I think pastry is very similar to architecture," said Zaharatos. "Pastry chefs make little structures, art objects; they're using different ratios and different proportions of things. They have to look beautiful and aesthetically pleasing."
Zaharatos says Long Island City was the perfect neighborhood to open his artistic sweet shop.
"It's a mixture of creative refugees from everywhere especially Manhattan. Someone purchased a chocolate bar a little while ago and told me she'd keep it for a few days just to look at it."
And for the architect turned entrepreneur, this type of feedback is what his sweet dreams are made of.