The store is building a pastry kitchen in Queens.

When she returns from vacation in September, she will go back to the pastry kitchen.

Now each week, he spends two evenings and all day Saturday in the pastry kitchen at Le Cirque 2000, still unpaid.

The glass-enclosed dining area is a pastry kitchen by day.

"I felt the weight as it left my hand," he said, racing around the pastry kitchen at Le Cirque.

It was nearly an hour later when they entered a large pastry kitchen where the banked fires provided a certain amount of light.

The pastry kitchen alone, he added, turns out 8,000 to 12,000 items daily.

At today's prices - and at the current level of competition in pastry kitchens - it takes a confident chef to give it a try.

Born and raised in New York, he has run several pastry kitchens in many of Manhattan's finest restaurants.

He passed from the kitchen to the pastry kitchen to the shop, his eyes scanning like radar.