Downtown Davis was lively as Upper Crust Baking celebrated its 40th anniversary at its retail space and bakehouse Oct. 17. Under a tent on the patio and parking lot, local band The Suspenders belted out jazzy tunes as dozens mingled and enjoyed cheese and charcuterie boards, flatbread pizza and local wines. Inside, the store sold bread and pastries, while the coffee bar brewed drinks from beans roasted by Davis’ own Pura Vida. The party was free, and guests were only asked to RSVP for a headcount.

The evening was marked by one minor crisis — the top of a celebratory Gâteau St. Honoré (a tower of cream puffs) toppled over — but the show went on, as it always has for the beloved Yolo County family business founded in November 1986 by two New Yorkers, Trudy and Maurice “Mo” Kalisky.

“I hope you guys have enjoyed the bakery as much as I do. We put so much love and time and effort into this,” said Tess Gillet-Kalisky, Trudy and Mo’s eldest granddaughter and the eldest daughter of their son Lorin Kalisky and his French wife, Edith Gillet-Kalisky. “I’ve seen my father put so many hours and hard work into this bakery; it makes me tear up because I’m just so proud of him.”

I’ve known the Kaliskys as long as Upper Crust has been open. I went to lower and middle school at Sacramento Country Day School with their daughter Gillian, who lives in Los Angeles with her family.

When I told my mom I was writing this article, she said she remembered Trudy and Mo picking up and dropping Gillian off in the Upper Crust delivery van when we hung out. I remember the business’s old motto, “Eat More Bread,” and its cheesecake is still the best I’ve ever had.

When I heard it was turning 40, I knew I had to show up for the birthday party.

‘There was no good bread’

In the early 1960s, Trudy and Mo met as teenagers in the studio audience of CBS’s “The American Musical Theatre” in New York City. In 1964, they got married and moved to Davis in 1970. Mo pursued his PhD in geology while Trudy pursued a master’s in art history, both at UC Davis. At one point, inspired by what he found in Julia Child’s second book, Mo started hobnobbing with the local elite and making bread for them.

“I was on the board of directors of the Sacramento Symphony, rubbing elbows with the big shots of Sacramento, business big shots and culinary restaurateurs and those kinds of people,” Mo, 83, recalled. “At that time, there was no good bread.”

I called award-winning Sacramento food journalistand local-Jewish nosh luminary Elaine Corn to fact-check that last statement.

“Yes, I agree with that,” Elaine told me, saying that Upper Crust “might have encouraged other bread competition. I won’t name names, but now there’s a lot of bread in Sacramento.”

In late November 1986, Mo and Trudy went pro and opened Upper Crust, pumping out breads and other baked goods with an influence from East Coast Jewish delis. Over the next three decades, they became regulars on the Central Valley food scene’s original social media: the farmers’ markets.

“They’ve been a fixture at the farmers’ markets in Davis forever,” Corn said. “And I think that’s a great form of marketing.”

One Sunday in the early 1990s, Gillian and I went with Trudy and Mo to the Davis Farmers Market to “help out.” We must have failed, and Trudy, who never disciplined us, told us to go away. We went off and got tamales.

Eventually, Upper Crust products landed on shelves at places like Corti Brothers and David Berkeley Fine Wines & Specialty Food, as well as on tables at the original Paragary’s Bar & Oven (until Paragary’s started making their own bread). In 1998, when I was a hostess at the now-shuttered original 33rd Street Bistro, Trudy would drop off challah for their French toast.

In the mid-2010s, Trudy and Mo handed the business to Lorin, who had spent over a decade in France, and his wife, Edith Gillet, who brought her French baking expertise, and their two daughters, Tess and Scarlett, to Yolo County.

In 2018, the operation moved into its current retail space near the Davis Food Co-Op. Upper Crust weathered the ensuing pandemic and, as a result, even opened a second location in Winters with a portion of their stimulus money.

In 2023, it survived an accidental car crash where, thankfully, no one was seriously hurt. They often participate in Davis’s Night Market, working to reduce food waste and food insecurity.

And they’ve done it all in a state where barely 10 percent of businesses have lasted 30 years.

“They work very hard, and they kept up with the times,” Corn said. “It’s just good bread.”

‘People’s bakery”

Today, Upper Crust has 45 employees on payroll, about two-thirds of whom are full-time. The first employees, the bakers, are in by 3 a.m. The front-of-house workers are out at 8 p.m.

“We bake almost around the clock,” Lorin, 56, said. “There are a few moments in a normal week where there’s nobody in the kitchen, but they’re pretty few and far between.”

Lorin is owner and general manager. Edith, 54, works as an executive at a large healthcare technology company and serves as the bakery’s “unofficial QA Manager.”

“She tells us when the French pastries are not up to snuff,” Lorin said.

On Friday nights, the Davis space transforms into Bistro Night, offering an elevated, full-service restaurant experience meant to resemble a Paris cafe. The feat has presented a learning curve.

“Being a restaurant is a very different kind of mode than being a bakery or being a cafe or being a retail store,” Lorin said. “The point of sale is different, and the way that orders get processed and fulfilled is very different. So we’re still trying to figure it out and make sure that we’re on top of things.”

You can find Upper Crust goods at many farmers’ markets, where you just might catch sight of Tess, a sophomore in Cinema Studies at CSU Monterey Bay, or Scarlett, 16, a sophomore at Davis High, working the table.

“They like interacting with people,” Lorin said. “So kind of behind the counter or at the farmers market is what they usually end up doing.”

When asked what single item they’d recommend for an Upper Crust first-timer, the Paris-born sisters both gave the same French-inspired answer.

“Definitely, baguette,” Scarlett said.

“In France, it’s baguette every day,” Tess added.

So when will the third generation take over said baguette production?

“I hope very sincerely that they do not get into this business anytime soon,” Edith said. “They need to go and build themselves, you know, go travel, go experience, go have other job, go work for other people.”

There’s no indication the family business won’t be there when they come back.

“I think more so than lots of other types of businesses, everybody has a bakery that they love currently or that they remember,” Lorin said. “We have a lot of people who are very loyal. That’s what we’re here for: to be people’s bakery.”

‘A big thing’

At one point in their story, Trudy and Mo met Julia Child at a PBS KVIE benefit event. Mo and Child stayed in touch. In 1993, Mo visited the chef, author, television personality and all-out food legend at her Cambridge, Mass., home.

“He helped her carry the groceries in from her car, and sat in her kitchen and chit-chatted with her,” Lorin recalled. “It was a big thing for my parents, and especially for my dad, to go and spend some time with her at her house.”

That kitchen is currently on permanent display in the Smithsonian. Gillian was also there, and in a letter back to Mo, Child called Gillian charming.

When Julia Child died in August 2004 at 91, a famous quote circulated widely: “Above all, have a good time.”

At the party on October 17, as I chatted with Trudy, who, like Mo, is now 83, the word “good” came up often.

“Well, we’ve had a good life,” Trudy said, looking back. “I can’t say we haven’t.”

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