Radio Cherry Bombe · The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network

Holiday Treats & Tenacity With Hawksmoor Pastry Chef Carla Henriques

December 17, 2025·45 min·3 clips

Pastry chef Carla Henriques, known as the Queen of Puddings at Hawksmoor, makes her podcast debut to discuss her journey from Lisbon to London.

The tree is lit. Keri is at Newsstand Studios in Rockefeller Center, with the rink open, the streets closed between 5th and 6th, and December making a scene outside. Carla is making her podcast debut, and Keri introduces her as Hawksmoor's Queen of Puddings before pausing on the British meaning of pudding. Fair enough. It covers more ground than the American version. Lisbon comes in early. Carla grew up going with her mother to a bakery job, and those memories sit quietly underneath the career story. The conversation stays loose and specific: career moves, sticky toffee pudding, the sticky toffee pudding sundae, and the rest of the Hawksmoor dessert menu. Carla wants space to make things. She talks about leaving jobs that boxed her in, going back to London, opening a restaurant with Soho House, and getting restless when the work stopped moving. Then Hawksmoor enters at the exact wrong, right moment. Carla had accepted another job when an agency pointed her toward Hawksmoor and warned her it was a steak restaurant, not the obvious pastry dream. Keri spots the turn right away. Carla says the team treated her warmly before the trial had even happened, so warmly that she said yes before she had fully processed it. Then came the awkward part: going back to the other restaurant and explaining that she had found her place, maybe her people. Keri pulls out the hiring lesson without overworking it. If you want someone, treat them like they already belong. Fifteen years later, Carla is still there, which gives the episode its weight. It is a pastry conversation, sure, but also a story about the rare restaurant job that can keep a restless creative person interested. Keri closes by congratulating Carla on the debut, then moves through Jubilee 2026 tickets, Cherry Bombe's Substack, the Rockefeller Center studio credits, and the usual signoff.

As heard by us

A warm holiday food conversation about sticky toffee pudding, creative freedom, and finding your people in restaurant work.

Radio Cherry Bombe wraps this one in December bustle: Rockefeller Center, the tree lit, the rink open, and Keri Diamond leaning into holiday dessert talk.

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Why you'd press play

The pastry chef who built Hawksmoor's cult dessert menu took the job without even asking what it paid.

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