Varieties of brioche from popup Pop’s Creole, from top left, clockwise: everything bagel, passionfruit and strawberry-cheesecake, sold at Kissaten in San Francisco.
Elena Kadvany/S.F. Chronicle
There are Creole dishes that Gabe LaMothe grew up eating that in “my soul I want to eat, so badly,” but he couldn’t find in the Bay Area: saucy New Orleans barbecue shrimp, or pot pies stuffed with shrimp and crawfish.
LaMothe’s popup, Pop’s Creole, is on a mission to change that, and to challenge local diners’ misperceptions about the cuisine. “They think it’s just fried food,” he said. “There’s so much depth that’s unexplored out here.”
Growing up in Oakland, LaMothe learned to cook Creole food watching his father, a native of New Orleans, nurture simmering pots of chicken and sausage gumbo enriched with a smoked ham shank and filé powder.
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LaMothe was a senior in high school when his father died. For the next three years, he couldn’t cook. Even the thought of gumbo, once comforting, became unbearable. Several years later, stranded with a roommate in his college town of Santa Cruz over Thanksgiving, LaMothe returned to the kitchen and, for the first time since losing his dad, made gumbo. “It was painful but really healing in a lot of ways,” he said.
This spurred a life shift for LaMothe. He began working in restaurants — including the toast station at Denny’s, and the upscale Shadowbrook in Capitola — and at bakeries, where he developed an obsession with lamination. After moving to the Bay Area from Santa Cruz, he worked at Mr. Holmes Bakehouse (which later shut down), Alameda’s now-closed Feel Good Bakery, then landed his dream job as head of lamination at San Francisco’s Neighbor Bakehouse.
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A few months later, amid the pandemic shutdown, he found himself out of a job. To stay busy and make ends meet, he started selling gumbo and red beans and rice from his garage, which eventually grew into Pop’s Creole, melding his family history with his kitchen experience.
At popups, he makes spins on Creole classics such as shrimp and grits, crawfish etouffee and muffulettas, but on dimpled focaccia. His lamination obsession, meanwhile, takes the form of both personal, savory pot pies — filled with braised beef or gumbo — and whole sweet ones, such as bananas Foster or buttermilk custard. Each one is encased in a flaky, hand-laminated crust.
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In 2021, he returned to Feel Good Bakery while running Pop’s on the side. Five years later, he’s decided to focus on it full time, and is now regularly selling pies, gumbo and other Creole dishes at breweries, wine bars and other locations throughout San Francisco and the East Bay.
Because lamination is incredibly labor intensive, he also expanded into an easier-to-produce but equally in-demand baked good: brioche. He makes a heavier egg yolk brioche, baked initially at a high temperature to give it rise and a little crumb on the outside. The temperature is then dropped, allowing the center of the brioche to just set, yielding an almost weightless texture. LaMothe recently landed his first wholesale customer, providing brioche to Kissaten, a new San Francisco coffee shop. Gushing with punchy passion fruit curd or garlic bechamel and chili crisp, the brioche sells out there almost daily.
There’s both relief and a heaviness, LaMothe said, to be continuously grieving through your business. “There’s always a choice in my mind. I’ll be doing prep the morning of a popup and it’s like, do I choose to keep going? Do I want to show up today?” he said. “It’s always yes.”
LaMothe’s dream is to open a tiny restaurant serving pie, coffee, beer and gumbo dusted with aromatic filé powder, just like his father’s.
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In the meantime, check Instagram for upcoming popups.