Local pastry lovers already know the sweet side of award-winning chef Kelsey Lucius.
Now she’s getting salty.
Lucius, a 2020 champion on the televised dessert competition Chopped Sweets, opened Bottom Line Bakery & Café in Evans in 2022 to bring upscale pastry to the Augusta area. Now, in just the past three months, she has opened two more eateries, the Salty Tomatoes Café, in Augusta and in Aiken, S.C.
Lucius moved with her family to Columbia County in 2006 from Long Island, N.Y., after her father retired from a 30-year career as a New York City firefighter.
As a middle-schooler, she began fundraising bake sales to buy toys and supplies for child patients at Augusta’s Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta. Another fundraiser helped purchase a medical bed for a young girl with muscular dystrophy.
Augusta Eats:Chopped cheese sending nostalgic New Yorkers to new North Augusta eatery
By the time Lucius graduated from Evans High School in 2012, she was preparing earnestly for a culinary career, enrolling at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. What started as an associate’s degree in baking and pastry arts ended with a dual major, a second associate’s degree in culinary arts and a bachelor’s degree in food service management.