Raise your hand if you’re sick to death of the same old plated dessert menus at, like, most restaurants. Oh, you’ve got a crème brulée, some kind of cheesecake and a flourless chocolate torte? Snooze, bro. Snooze.
If we’re lucky, these things are made in-house, even if they are pretty boring at this point, but it seems more often than not lately, they’ll come out of a box from Sysco or Shamrock, and for a food realm tied to the idea of good times and celebration, that’s just kind of sad. On one hand, this is understandable—restaurant profit margins are razor-thin, and desserts tend to get regarded as loss leaders. Still, there’s a wild and wooly world of sweets available for those who believe.
In Santa Fe, for example, if you know where to look, anyway, we’re kind of spoiled in the dessert realm. Take Horno Restaurant, where the dessert pop-tart wows; or The Shed/La Choza sister restaurants, where the mocha mousse cake has been a constantly beloved order spanning back to time immemorial. The bottom line, though, is that if you want innovative or even slightly unexpected desserts, you need to find you a restaurant that employs a pastry chef full-time, and as of 2025, pastry chef Rebecca Freeman (Becky to her friends, y’all) will handle the sweets at two such local eateries: Coyote Café and Santacafé.
As we speak, Freeman is developing dessert menus for both restaurants in conjunction with their chefs—Dale Kester at Santacafé and, as of February, Dakota Weiss of Capital Coal Neighborhood Eatery, who will take the reins at Coyote Café. She’ll also remain the pastry chef for The Club at Las Campanas through a transitionary period, a restaurant at which, she estimates, she created 400 one-of-a-kind desserts, no dupes, in 400 days during the pandemic. So who is this maven, where did she come from and why should you care?
“I grew up in Chicago, went to culinary school in Chicago and moved out here in 2012 for Geronimo,” Freeman says, nailing the dessert pedigree right out of the gate. “My sister was going to Santa Fe University of Art & Design, and honestly, it was supposed to be a three-day vacation, and I just kind of stuck around.”
Freeman quit her jobs back home while still in Santa Fe. These included a baking position at a now-defunct bakery called Twisted Baker, desserts at some dive bar and a pastry chef job at North Pond (the latter of which is “amazing” according to a buddy of this writer who lives out there). The pull of Santa Fe proved too strong, which is a common story among artists—and make no mistake, a pastry chef is an artist—and one that allowed Freeman to make use of her culinary arts degree from Chicago’s Kendall College. Before that, she’d fallen in love with the restaurant world during business development classes in high school; before that, she’d learned to cook and bake at her grandmother’s side—pasta, to be specific.
“When I was four, she had this tiny extruder,” Freeman says. “And it’s one of the best smells, Italian food.”
Ultimately, though, a bûche de noël cake she made as a kid led to Freeman’s lifelong baking pursuits.
“For me, baking is more precise,” she explains. “Cooking is a little bit more like, ‘Yee-haw, cowboy! You can add in whatever flavors will work!’ But baking, you need to put the ingredients in beforehand and trust the process.”
“Hospitality is a team sport—I can’t do it alone,” she says. “Everybody works as a team, and I think [Santacafé and Coyote Café owner] Quinn [Stephenson] is so good at team-building and treating his staff well. That’s what attracted me to the job in the first place.”
The Side Hustle
If you simply can’t wait until Freeman unleashes her desserts at Santacafé and Coyote Café next month, perhaps it’s time to check out her custom bakery business, Worn Whisk Bakery. SFR staffers recently sampled a variety box of cookies—including chocolate chip with a chocolate-dipped bottom, no less—and each one was more incredible than the last. Freeman’s Worn Whisk website showcases a number of cookie and cake options, so perhaps consider that the next time you’ve got a sweet tooth.