And so, another Friday morning begins at the Osterville Farmers’ Market for the pair of wash-a-shores transplanted from Venice Beach, CA. Danny has been a working screenwriter since his teenaged years after moving to New York. “I optioned the first thing I wrote,” he remembers. “I thought, ‘this is so easy!’ – cut to forty years later, geez,” he laughs with a roll of the eyes. He was working on a draft script for actor Kevin Hart’s production company at the time of this interview. Kim is a three-time Emmy Award nominee for her work in set decoration on the Showtime show, Ozark. She most recently wrapped up her work on the locally filmed Anthony Bourdain biopic this past summer.
What do two people familiar with props and plot points know about quiche, or cooking in general? Turns out Danny comes from a restaurant family…a really big restaurant family. His parents moved him and his nine siblings around the greater Philadelphia area each time his father opened a new barbeque restaurant. Any of the kids eager to break into the family business had to start at the bottom. Danny took his turn as a dishwasher and rose in the ranks to work the grill. He loved the position so much, he passed on further promotion to stay on the grill. “I was promoted to sauté [cook], but I turned it down even though it meant a dollar raise,” he says.
In 2004, a friend got in touch for Danny’s help in launching a barbeque restaurant in Venice Beach. “We were building great buzz, hosting tasting menus to work out the final menu,” Danny recalls. “Then my buddy got into heroin and went M.I.A. three weeks before we were set to open.” Fischer and another friend (with very limited restaurant experience) pulled it together and opened the doors to Baby Blues BBQ to rave reviews. “We were lucky to have already pre-paid for the food since it was C.O.D.,” he recalls. It became abundantly clear that this was no way to run a business, so Danny cobbled together $50,000 cash from a group of friends and family and offered to buy out his business partner who jumped at the money. After that, the business took off, thanks in part to the producers of the television show “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” filming an episode featuring Baby Blues BBQ. Danny’s brother Paul opened a Baby Blues in San Francisco, brother Stephen launched one back home in Philadelphia, and a fourth location was started in Hollywood. “I was very hands-on back then, traveling between locations,” Danny says. Then, the pandemic hit. “COVID took down Philadelphia and Hollywood,” Danny laments. “But Venice Beach and San Fran are still going strong.”
As Baby Blues BBQ was beginning its growth, Danny went to a party in 2005. There he met a tall brunette by the name of Kim Leoleis, and the two hit it off immediately – chatting for hours as the rest of the party melted into the background. That initial spark provided Danny a moment of inspiration…or insanity. After mentioning his upcoming trip to New York, Kim sighed how she hadn’t been to New York in some time. Danny’s wheels began to spin. While Kim stepped away to visit the restroom, Danny took a photo of her license and bought her a round-trip plane ticket on his flight. “Now this is where things could have gone one of two ways,” he laughs. “We’d either end up together, or I’d go to jail!” he laughs. “She said, ‘Oh, that’s so great, wait, how’d you know my last name?’” Luckily for Danny, Kim found the gesture romantic, and the pair married earlier this year in Greece – twenty years to the day of that fateful meeting.
In 2018, Danny needed to take a step back from the barbeque business. “It was consuming me,” he recalls. “I didn’t have the time to do anything else.” Once free, he began to write screenplays again. However, between the challenges facing the industry due to the pandemic, along with the Hollywood writers’ strike of 2023, both of their careers were put on ice. A week-long trip to visit Kim’s parents in Osterville during this time got the pair thinking about relocating to Cape Cod. It was Kim’s aunt who came up with the idea to turn to quiche. “I had been making quiches and pies for Kim’s family,” Danny states. The plan was formed to sell the baked goods at local farmers’ markets with an original goal to sell thirty to forty pies a week. Now, they’re selling one hundred fifty or more.
In the beginning, it was Danny alone producing the pies at the Cape Cod Culinary Incubator at KAM Appliances in Hyannis. Kim decided to pitch in and help with production. “She’s been terrific. She said, ‘let me help you, and I’ll make the pie shells’,” Danny remembers. There were a few stumbles out of the gate for this baking novice, but she researched how to perfect the dough making process. “Three weeks in, and damn, they looked great,” he enthuses. Kim was making up to 300 shells a week when she finally went back to work for the first time since the writers’ strike a few short months ago on the Bourdain movie. The Quiche Cart scaled back the number of farmers’ markets they attended to accommodate her change in schedule.
The shells are “blind baked” for three minutes, brushed with egg wash, and baked for one minute more before being flash frozen. This prevents the shells from becoming soggy when filled with ingredients. Danny and Kim will wrap the edges of the shells with silicone to protect them from over-browning while baking the quiches. The two originals to the lineup of organic quiches and pies were the Lorraine and the Farm. “We take some liberties with the Lorraine,” Danny admits. All the quiches on the menu feature a blend of 1000-day cave-aged Gouda, Gruyère, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheeses. The Lorraine has caramelized bacon, sweet Vidalia onions, and freshly chopped herbs such as thyme, which is from the Fischers’ own garden. The Farm and Nature’s Sweet Tooth are wonderful vegetarian options with combinations of grilled asparagus, roasted mushrooms, Vidalia onions, and garlic (Farm) or roasted sweet potato, sweet corn, Vidalia onions, and roasted leeks (Nature’s Sweet Tooth).
The Quiche Cart’s menu of options truly is gourmet. The Sea is a bounty of the ocean in a pie shell. Each one is laden with scallops, shrimp, and lobster along with bacon and roasted leeks and herbs.
As the weather cools, the savory pies make their long-awaited return…the Beef Bourguignon and the Chicken Pot Pie. Rich and hearty, the Beef Bourguignon teems with Black Angus steak and smoked bacon. Balancing all that meat are the carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, and pearl onions in a creamy sauce enhanced by a splash of pinot noir.
If mother’s chicken soup can cure what ails you, The Quiche Cart’s Chicken Pot Pie could very well make you invincible. Farmhouse chicken is slow-roasted and mixed with carrots, green beans, corn, peas, celery, and umami-delivering mushrooms. The mixture is bathed in a sauce of chicken stock, butter, and brandy.
The crew of The Quiche Cart has grown over the last couple of years. The pair have enlisted Kim’s mom, Joyce Leoleis, and Mary Silberman to help with the six hours of prep work and another five hours of assembly and baking per week. It’s also invaluable to have Kim’s mom only minutes from the Osterville Farmers’ Market for the times when there’s a run on a particular quiche. She’s at the ready to swoop in to help out when supplies need to be restocked.
After the farmers’ market shuts down for the season in mid-October, The Quiche Cart continues to sell their savory gourmet quiches and pies at The Market at Beacon Gardens at Osterville (available year-round), and on The Quiche Cart web site. The flavors have certainly found a following from anyone who’s tried them, and it’s because Danny refuses to cut corners. He uses only top-quality ingredients, sourced locally whenever possible to try to limit their carbon footprint.
When a small business has created a choice menu of gourmet quiches and pies, the usual course of action would be to expand – perhaps opening a brick-and-mortar establishment. For Danny and Kim, The Quiche Cart is different. “I know what a ninety-hour work week looks like,” he firmly says of his days running Baby Blues BBQ. So perhaps it’ll be a pop-up location a few days a week? Could more businesses be enlisted as distribution sites along with Beacon Gardens at Osterville? Perhaps an enhanced online ordering system on their web site will go into effect? The final draft of The Quiche Cart’s script has yet to be written, but you can be sure the tale of Danny and Kim Fischer and The Quiche Cart will continue to have tasty morsels peppered throughout it.
The Quiche Cart
TheQuicheCart.com
Cape Cod Culinary Incubator
Located at KAM Appliances
6 Aggregate Way, Hyannis
CapeCulinary.org
The Market at Beacon Gardens at Osterville
182 Osterville-West Barnstable Road, Osterville
beacongardens.com
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