A Foxy Move

When Fox & Hounds closed, crafty Eric Bunge kept the pastry shop alive in a new location

 Eric Bunge is living proof that on-the-job training can truly pay off.
 In 1981, fresh out of high school in Lake Orion, he applied for a kitchen job at Fox & Hounds Restaurant. He admits he didn’t know much about food, but he was persuasive enough to land the job of sandwich-maker.
From that beginning, he worked his way up the food chain, first to broiler man, then sous-chef and, finally, to day-kitchen supervisor at the landmark Bloomfield Hills restaurant.
And that’s when pastry came into his life. Sweet Endings, the pastry shop at the restaurant, suddenly moved out in 1987, leaving a void proprietors Jackie and Kevin Downey were eager to fill.
Bunge volunteered to take over — despite the fact that he was as much a neophyte with cakes and tortes as he had been with sandwich-making six years previously.
After taking a two-week crash course in pastry-making, one that he says taught him, “not much,” he started practicing on his own, starting with individual flans.
“Baking came easy after a year,” he says, and he was soon producing showstopping decorated tortes, flans, and cheesecakes as if he had been a star apprentice in a Parisian bakery.
Bunge became known especially for his gorgeous wedding cakes, decorated not in the usual rolled fondant, but with his favorite medium — chocolate.
He uses semi-sweet dark and white Callebaut chocolate from Belgium. “No milk chocolate,” he says firmly.
When Fox & Hounds closed last year, Bunge was determined to keep the pastry business alive. Kerri Richway, who had worked with him for 14 years, came along, too, and continues as his assistant.
The Downeys gave him the gold-lettered wooden sign from the original shop, and it hangs over the counter at his new location in West Bloomfield. Some decorative pieces, carved from wood, also ornament the shop, and they, too, are the creations of the chef.
Just another skill he didn’t know he had until he tried.
 Fox & Hounds Pastry Den, Crosswinds Plaza, 4301 Orchard Lake Rd. at Lone Pine Road, West Bloomfield; 248-865-0880. 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. Closed Sun.

This article appears in the June 2008 of Hour Detroit.
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