In October 2007, Michael Bump vented on MySpace about someone not appreciating the birthday cake he’d made for her.
To his surprise, he received a message from a Jacksonville woman who said she’d be very happy if he would bake her a cake.
“Yeah, but you’re in Florida and I’m in Kansas City,” he thought to himself.
He and Melissa soon began a long-distance conversation.
When she invited him to come to Jacksonville, Bump felt nothing holding him in Kansas City and he was tired of being in the Midwest.
So he picked up and headed South in June 2008.
Melissa later became the mother of his now 7-year-old son, Myles.
And it is Myles who is Bump’s sole reason for getting up in the morning and going to work.
“Everything I do is for him, to better him in some way or another,” Bump said.
As long as his son is in Jacksonville, Bump will be, too.
In July, he left Restaurant Orsay after eight years to become the executive pastry chef for the Forking Amazing Restaurants group, which includes Bistro Aix, Ovinté, Il Desco and the Cowford Chophouse, scheduled to open next year.
Working from the Bistro Aix location in San Marco, Bump oversees the group’s other pastry chefs, coordinates desserts with each restaurant’s specific cuisine and offers dessert catering on a limited basis.
When the Chophouse opens, he’ll move to its modern and more spacious kitchen at Bay and Ocean streets and be able to better service all four locations.
Each restaurant will have someone on-site to meet customer requests, but a lot of the prep work can be done in the Downtown restaurant.
Bump grew up in Southern California, attended the Western Culinary Institute in Portland, Ore., and worked in some big-name restaurants in Kansas City, Mo., for several years.
But he’s quite happy here.
“I’ll never landlock myself again. I need the ocean,” he said.
After eight years in Jacksonville, Bump sees a lot to like.
“It’s amazing to see how the food culture has progressed in the time I’ve been here,” he said.
The influx of major restaurants and the increase in food-related experiences have led to a whirlwind of information to take in and incorporate in his work.
He was inspired and realized he needed to step up his game and be more creative.
Bump started baking in elementary school, making box cake mixes and brownies.
“I literally remember the first time I made a cake from scratch and I was so excited that it came out,” he said of the purple cake he made as a seventh-grader.
Bump doesn’t remember his aspirations throughout high school. That time’s just a blur — until he went to culinary school.
He always leaned toward making pastries and desserts rather than other types of cooking because it’s more methodical. You have to stop and think about what you’re doing, he said.
“You can’t just add a little salt,” Bump said. “If I did that, I’d just have to start all over.”
There’s no comparison for him to making pastries and desserts versus other types of cooking. Early in his career he turned down a job where he’d have to do both.
“You could throw me on a grill and I’d screw everything up,” he said.
In his current position, Bump feels less stressed than in the past and feels he gets more done.
He’s in control of his kitchen and, with his staff, he has time to focus on new recipes and handling various managerial aspects.
Bump spent about three hours creating a cookie for a special event that will eventually be featured at the Chophouse.
Recently, he discarded five or six versions of a pumpkin cookie recipe before he found one that had the right combination of taste, texture and pumpkin to make him happy.
Bump has no idea where the inspirations for his creations come from. He says 90 percent of the recipes are his from 18 years of doing pastries.
When asked about his favorite desserts, he admits to a weakness for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Publix ice cream.
He does taste whatever he makes, but that’s enough. His desserts are too rich for him to consume all the time.
Bump says many of his life choices have been inspired by movies.
He watched one movie where the characters were working in a coffee house and it looked like fun. He thought he’d like to work in a coffee house. So he did.
Then he saw a movie about working in a cheese shop and he did that for a while, too.
He feels he learned more about future endeavors he wanted to pursue as a result of things he tried during each experience.
As for his five-year plan, Bump envisions making ice cream.
“You can have so much fun with it,” he said. “You can put almost anything in ice cream, play with the flavors and come up with new flavors people request. I would do anything to get back into that again.”
He wants to start a bakery/ice cream shop where he can make the pastries and sell house-made ice cream. He’s already registered a name for the shop: Any Given Sundae.
Whether it will be with the backing of his current restaurant group remains to be seen. But it is on the table.
Bump discussed it with the owners when he interviewed for his current position and they left it as an open possibility for the future.
But his plans may change — depending on what movies he sees in the meantime.