This Ocean City Bakery Gave Actor Dominic Sessa His First Job

A South Jersey businesswoman gave actor and local product Dominic Sessa his first job a decade ago when he was 13.

Cathy Greene, owner of Cathy's 14th Street Bakery in Ocean City, talked with me this week about how she came to hire young Dominic and she still considers him a good hire.

Dominic worked at the bakery for five childhood summers.

We had this conversation just after Tony, the movie liberally interpreted from a chapter in Anthony Bourdain's book 'Kitchen Confidential', earned $5 million in its first weekend in wide release and finished in seventh place on the weekend's box office charts.

Not bad for a movie with a budget rumored to have been less than $15 million.

Tony, fueled by strong reviews and a lasting affection for Bourdain, whose food and travel shows made the popular chef an icon. Bourdain died in 2018.

The movie focuses on Bourdain's summer working in Provincetown as a precocious 19-year-old who discovers that he loves to cook.

Dominic Sessa, who lived in Egg Harbor Township and Ocean City growing up and impressed everyone in the movie "The Holdover," stars as Bourdain.

Dominic Sessa Started as a Dishwasher in a Bakery

Cathy Greene had hired Dominic's sister, Bella, to work in her store a couple of summers before, and she asked Cathy if her younger brother could get a job.

"When he started, he was 13 years old; his sister had worked there for a couple of summers, and she said, "My brother can do dishes".

 

I said, "Okay, bring him in and he started. He was a typical 13-year-old kid, very easygoing. Quiet, typical, because I have a son the same exact age.

 

The next summer, they had moved into Ocean City (from Egg Harbor Township), and he was just a few blocks away, so I asked him if he wanted to work again, and he said sure.

 

After a couple of weeks, I was teaching him how to make the dough and get the dough onto the bench, and eventually he started helping me roll and fry the doughnuts."

Cathy started having Anthony open the shop and begin making the doughnuts very early in the morning.

"He had to come in at 4 o'clock in the morning, and he would walk from his house on the bay in the dark and unlock the store, turn on the lights, turn on the oven and the fryer, and get the shop ready for business, and he did a better job than some adults because he was smart."

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The Day Dominic Ruined the Doughnuts

While promoting the movie, Tony Sessa told Bon Appétit about the day that he accidentally ruined the doughnuts and the business's trash cans. 

“One time I put the wrong dough mix in the bowl,” Sessa recalls with a self-conscious laugh. “There was too much yeast in it. I turned around and it had become this massive dough monster, spilling out of the machine.

 

I had 20 minutes until Cathy got there, so I put it all into the outdoor trash cans. I thought I’d gotten away with it, but when she went outside to throw something out, the dough had expanded five times more, exploding out of the cans, and I had to admit what I’d done.

 

She said, ‘I would have been much less disappointed if you’d just told me, and we could have fixed the problem. Now my trash cans are destroyed.’

 

Cathy taught me that it was okay to make mistakes, as long as I didn't lie about it.”

In her telling of the story, Cathy remembers trying to make the apologetic Dominic feel better by telling him that it was a common mistake.

But she still laughs about the story.

I remember someone saying, "There's something coming out of your trash cans; the dough was literally billowing out of the trash cans.

 

It was so funny, and he was like, Cathy, I'm so sorry.  And I said, dude, it's okay. We've all done it. You wasted $50 worth of dough; I don't care. It happens.

 

By the way, Cathy tells me that her cream doughnuts are the star attraction at the bakery if you find yourself on 14th Street in Ocean City.

You can even see the old trash cans from the 'dough monster' days in the back alley.