About

Gracious Bakery + Cafe opened its doors in 2012. Owned by the husband-and-wife team of Megan and Jay Forman, Gracious gained a loyal following and over the next couple of years expanded to other locations around New Orleans.

Today, Gracious operates three bakeries and has been featured in national publications like Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, Pastry Arts and more. Their excellent pastry chefs have competed on TV shows like The Food Network’s Chopped: Desserts and their baked goods can also be enjoyed in some of New Orleans’ finest hotels and restaurants.

Our Team

Megan Forman

Co-Owner / Executive Chef

A NOLA native and graduate of the New England Culinary Institute, Megan Forman is the creative force behind Gracious Bakery. Over twenty years, she earned her stripes at fine dining establishments and patisseries in New York and New Orleans, including six years as the pastry chef for James Beard Award-winning restaurant Bayona. Since opening Gracious in 2012, Megan has been celebrated as one of the country’s leading pastry chefs, with her work appearing in such publications as Food Arts, Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine and Modern Bride. She has also been featured in multiple episodes of PBS’s Kitchen Queens, which puts a spotlight on women who have made significant contributions to the culinary landscape.

Jay Forman

Co-Owner / 3rd String Dishwasher

Sequestered in his upstairs office at Gracious HQ, Jay Forman spends vast stretches of time alone, doubtless doing something important. Thanks to uncanny ability to enter credit card slips and sales transactions into QuickBooks, he keeps the unseen gears and cogs of Gracious LLC’s administrative machinery slowly turning. Supertasters might even be able to detect the subtle, nut-like profile of his bookkeeping in the pate a choux