Pastry Chef Matt Tinder Bringing His Mad Skills to New Bremerton Bakery

Pastry chef Matt Tinder is headed to Bremerton. Tinder brings some seriously impressive chops with him on his new venture, having worked at Napa Valley's The Restaurant at Meadowood and San Francisco's Coi, both of which are Michelin-starred restaurants. Damn.

Tinder is now planning to open his own bakery, to be called Saboteur, near-ish the ferry terminal in Bremerton. Tinder parted ways with The Restaurant at Meadowood in January and began looking to open his own bakery with his fiance, Kate Giuggio. But plans to open in California didn't pan out.

"We kind of got to a point down here where doors were closing to us over and over in terms of getting a permanent space. We're selling tons of products at the farmers markets and we have a huge following but as far as settling in and opening a bakery, we gave it a year and it just didn't happen," says Tinder, whose sister lives in Seattle. He and Giuggio had been to visit a few times and decided to "try and make the bakery happen up there."

First, they looked at a space in Georgetown, but "it didn't really fit us," Tinder says. "It's not that we don't want to do Seattle proper, it's more that we were looking for a unique space as well as us being able to open our business on our terms and not starting off and having to produce crazy amount of money for rent." Fair enough.

They ended up finding a space on 13th Street in Bremerton, near the waterfront and across the street from Evergreen Rotary Park. The "space" is actually a Quonset hut that Tinder and Giuggio will transform into their bakery, complete with retail space too. They'll start working on the space October 1, with the aim of opening in February. Ideally they'll have a "San Francisco-inspired parklet" in front, as well as picnic space in the back.

Tinder will mill his own grains on site, and he plans to use entirely Washington ingredients. Expect breads, morning pastries like croissants and brioches, and "hard-to-find, naturally-leavened breads." Much of the ingredients and offerings list is still evolving, and Tinder will begin building partnerships once his feet hit the ground in Bremerton.

The couple also expects to include wholesale offerings, building relationships with coffee shops, restaurants, and groceries in the area — including in Seattle.