Emily Spurlin (pastry chef)

Emily Spurlin is a pastry chef, food stylist and recipe developer based in Chicago. She founded sourbittersalty, which began as her Instagram handle and later became the name of her pastry business.^[1][2]

Career

Chicago Food Magazine reports that Spurlin first became interested in pastry while at culinary school in Paris. She then moved to Chicago, where she worked for years on the savory line, notably at The Publican. She later joined Floriole Café and Bakery to learn laminated pastry, and she was executive pastry chef on the opening team at Bad Hunter, where she built the pastry program from scratch. She also worked with chef Abra Berens at Granor Farm in Three Oaks, Michigan. In 2019 Lula Cafe in Logan Square hired her as its pastry chef.^[3] The magazine describes her style as inspired by nature: she uses brightly colored foods, botanicals, flowers and herbs in desserts that are "playful, colorful."^[3]

Recognition

In February 2020 the James Beard Foundation named Spurlin, then at Lula Cafe, one of 20 semifinalists in its national Outstanding Pastry Chef category.^[4] The Foundation's published list of 2020 semifinalists includes her under that category.^[5] The Dayton Daily News reported the news as a local story, since Spurlin is a 2006 graduate of Oakwood High School in Ohio. She told the paper that the award "has honestly never been a goal of mine."^[4]

According to the same article, she earned a bachelor's degree in nutrition and dietetics at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and then worked for about eight months as a hostess at the former Rue Dumaine restaurant in Washington Township, near Dayton, which was co-founded by the James Beard Award-winning chef Anne Kearney. She credited Kearney with persuading her that kitchens could be welcoming to women. She then trained in the pastry program of the École Supérieure de Cuisine Française (Ferrandi) in Paris. The paper also noted that StarChefs had profiled her as a rising-star pastry chef in May 2018, for her work at Bad Hunter.^[4]

Online presence and later work

A 2020s profile by Hunter & Folk says that Spurlin grew up in a military family. It also says she stepped back from restaurant work after pandemic-era burnout and now works freelance, making custom cakes, catering events, teaching and styling food.^[1] Her Instagram account @sourbittersalty had about 21,000 followers and 968 posts in September 2026.^[2] She also writes a Substack newsletter, sourbittersaltygram, which she describes as a space to explore "pastry, nature, and creativity."^[6]