A food crush is a dish where you wake up the next day realizing that you dreamed of it. You fantasize, playing out the next time you’ll taste it. I had Grandma’s Bread Pudding at Mar | Muntanya last year and I’m still dreaming about it. I had to go back and get the whole story from Executive Chef Tyson Peterson.
Executive Chef Tyson Peterson. Photo courtesy of Mar | Muntanya.
Picture this: you’ve just had a stunning meal. Spanish fare, with tapas, a glass of wine, and you think you’re full. But make room and order the bread pudding. It will arrive warm, custardy inside, crowned with whipped cream and dotted with candied pecans and shaved chocolate. Better yet, it can come with Pedro Ximénez sherry in a thin-stemmed dessert glass and a side of salted caramel banana ice cream. Swoon-worthy.
Chef Tyson has a thoughtful and intentional approach to cooking, making fine dining feel personal and approachable, and there’s more to this dish than decadent flavors. It is a story of family, tradition and a lineage of merging flavors. He was inspired by his two grandmothers, Myrna, a precise baker who loved the refined life, and Verna, who made rustic loaves and preserves. Yes, their names rhyme, and yes, it was confusing for the grandkids.
“The recipe is modeled after my Grandma Myrna’s suet pudding,” Chef Tyson says. “It’s been passed down for generations, with English and Danish origins, to my kitchen today. This dessert is honoring that heritage.” It was a poor man’s dessert. “You use leftover pork fat, leftover bread and dried fruit.”
Chef Tyson maintains the pioneer philosophy of ‘use everything, waste nothing.’ The bread comes from brioche scraps. Ingredients are modernized by swapping suet for butter, raisins for dried Bing cherries, pecans for walnuts. Valrhona dark chocolate gives a hint
of bitterness.
The fresh whipped cream balances the decadence and adds lightness. The candied pecans bring a nice textural crunch. Grandma Myrna would top it with a sweet buttermilk sauce—Chef drizzles it with salted caramel.
Don’t skip on the salted caramel banana ice cream and X.O. sherry. Hints of the tropics in the sherry tie into the banana ice cream, bringing notes of raisin, roasted nuts and fruit leather—like a liquid extension of the bread pudding’s heritage. Chef Tyson describes the sherry’s taste as “drinking the sauce.”
If you decide to skip the ice cream and want a more digestif-like finish, the tawny port is a nice option.
This bread pudding connects past and present. It is a restaurant-worthy, crushable dish that belies humble beginnings and a nostalgic recipe yet retains its original soul. It showcases Chef Tyson’s intentionality on every plate. Don’t miss Tyson Peterson’s heritage-rich bread pudding at Mar | Muntanya.
When you Go
Mar | Muntanya at The Hyatt Regency
170 S. West Temple St., SLC, UT 84101
mar-muntanya.com
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