Cake Man Raven Is Shut Down

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Librado Romero/The New York Times Cake Man Raven showing the mayor how to ice, November 2009.

Cake Man Raven, the celebrated and well-connected Brooklyn baker who has blanketed much of the city in red velvet cake from his shop in Fort Greene, was shut down by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene this week for sanitary violations that it said included the presence of flies, lack of a hand-washing station near the food preparation area and toilet room, and the supervisor of operations’ lack of a food protection certificate.

Raven, born Raven Patrick De’Sean Dennis III, is no stranger to legal difficulty, having been shut down briefly by the health department in 2008 and been hit with a default judgment in a lawsuit filed by workers who said he underpaid them. Current employees told the Local, the Times blog about Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, that they have been unable to wash up lately because the Cake Man had not paid his water bill. Read the full story on The Local.