On a busy weekday morning in downtown Ann Arbor, there’s a new way to start your day: Orijin Bakery, the brainchild of Chef Jin Gorian Capobianco and Sava Farah (of Sava’s, Aventura, and The Dixboro Project renown). A neighborhood bakery with the quiet confidence of a classical French pastry background, its mission is remarkably humble: a sense of belonging and community for all who walk through its doors.
“I’ve always wanted Orijin to be just a neighborhood bakery, really,” Capobianco says. “Somewhere that people can come get their coffee before work, but also get their kids’ birthday cake every year, their wedding cakes — just something very community-oriented.”
It’s a modest ambition for a pastry chef with serious culinary bona fides. Capobianco knew she wanted to be a chef from a young age, encouraged by parents who supplied Easy-Bake Ovens, cookbooks and cake pans. Straight out of high school, she enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., studying baking and pastry before heading west to Colorado and eventually spending eight years working in New York.
There, a combination of European-trained mentors and New York’s devotion to seasonal produce helped shape a pastry philosophy that Capobianco has since made distinctly her own.
After stints in Austin and Chicago, Capobianco spotted an opening for executive pastry chef at The Dixboro Project. “As soon as I walked in the back door of Dixboro, I was like, ‘I gotta work here,’” she says.
Ann Arbor diners have been reaping the benefits ever since.
At Dixboro, however, Capobianco’s pastry program necessarily existed in conversation with the restaurant around it. With only about 500 square feet to work with, ambitions for a larger bread, cake and savory program had to wait.
Then Farah asked a consequential question: “Do you want to open a bakery?”
Orijin is the answer.
Here, Capobianco has room to expand the cake program she began at Dixboro, develop breads and sandwiches, and follow the hyper-seasonal approach she honed in New York. Her creations often begin with whatever is coming out of the ground right now, exploring a single ingredient in multiple forms. A peach tart, for example, might layer peach jam, peach curd and peach jelly with the fresh fruit itself.
“I like to really showcase the product in all different ways,” she says.
Farah, meanwhile, has largely given Capobianco the freedom to run. Early tastings at Dixboro eventually gave way to a simple directive — make it what you want. It’s a testament, according to Capobianco, to the autonomy and trust that have made their partnership work so well.
It’s fitting that their newest collaboration brings Farah back downtown, close to where her own restaurant career began.
“It’s surreal to be back on the block, in the same footprint where I opened Sava’s 20 years ago,” Farah says. “Five days in, Orijin already feels like a place for daily rituals, familiar faces and new ones. There’s such a special synergy among the local businesses downtown, and it’s an honor to add something new to the landscape of Ann Arbor while feeling so connected to its history.”
That sense of connection is the driving force at Orijin. Its technology-free dining room is deliberately designed for something increasingly precious downtown: lingering with one another.
“I love seeing the old ladies come in here and just have some tart, or some friends catch up,” Capobianco says. “It’s been really great to see more community members come in here.”
Looking around, Orijin has already found success: no phones, a bustling bakery with no empty tables, and folks laughing and connecting over coffee and bread.
Learn more at orijinbakery.com.