The 10 Dishes That Made My Career: Christina Tosi

The Milk Bar sugar queen talks breakfast cereals, french fries dipped in soft-serve, and the importance of “the gooey.”

Sophie Brickman

Before Cereal Milk™, Compost Cookie®, and Crack Pie™ joined corn dogs and cupcakes in the C section of the pop-food lexicon, there was another C: Christina Tosi. Raised in Virginia, Tosi, 30, is the sweet to David Chang’s savory within the Momofuku empire, whipping up humorous and, some say, brilliant desserts to match Chang’s envelope-pushing Korean-American cuisine.

After graduating early from college with a degree in mathematics and Italian, she attended New York’s French Culinary Institute. From there, she made stops at Bouley and wd~50 before landing at Momofuku. Now chef-owner of Milk Bar’s five locations (plus a Montauk pop-up), Tosi spends her days making the Snickerdoodle look about as inspired as a stale rice cake. Here, she talks us through what she calls “the timeline of my love affair with sweets.” Go ahead: Try to make it through the list without raiding the vending machine.

The following interview has been edited and condensed.

1. The Non-Rice Krispies Treat

I was raised to follow the rules, but the one thing I loved about baking was I’d always break the rules. I thought making Rice Krispies Treats with anything but Rice Krispies was mind-blowing. Between sophomore and junior year [of high school], every single night I’d do my homework and be a good kid, and then I’d melt down butter and marshmallows over the stove and choose my cereal. Lucky Charms was my favorite. I always had my finger on the pulse of the cereal market. And I always put twice the amount of butter in that you were supposed to. Go figure.
2. “Million Dollar Cake,” a.k.a. Gooey Butter Cake (Crack Pie, iteration one)

My mother and grandmother used to make it. It’s rich, it’s dense, it’s gooey, it’s sweet. I loved to study the different layers of the gooey texture. I didn’t really think I could put gooey butter cake on the menu at Milk Bar, but I needed something that would be that same gooey-sweet-sugary mix. I’m a really big creature of crunch, but in a baked good, it’s about the gooey.
3. Cookie Dough with Pantry Items (Compost Cookie, iteration one)

As a kid, I’d make cookies every single day—I would go home and bake all night instead of going out—and again it was about breaking the rules, reinventing the chocolate-chip cookie. What else can I put in this, what other type of oatmeal cookie can I make besides an oatmeal raisin, what else, what else, what else? I would use the recipe on the back of the Toll House package, but I’d never measure. I was like, “What if I put in too much light brown sugar?” It’s something I’ve continued with, obviously, today.
4. Dairy Queen French Fries and Soft Serve

My dad had a huge sweet tooth for soft serve, so we’d go to Dairy Queen a fair amount. Everybody else would just get ice cream and I’d be like, “I need French fries and a small thing of ice cream.” I’d eat them one after the other, or dip. The opening menu at Milk Bar had little fingerling potato chips as a topping for the soft serve, and I remember Dave [Chang] being like, “What is this all about?” The people who know, know. You know when you have Wendy’s French fries and a Frosty? You dunk it. Obviously.
5. Cornbread Ice Cream at wd-50

When I was 22, 23, I was working at Bouley and wd~50 had just opened. It was the biggest deal. This was before blogs, so it was all word of mouth, you know, "Oh my god, I hear they have this fried mayonnaise on the menu." I started working at wd~50 for free because I thought, "God knows if I even have the skill." I eventually became the pastry chef. The cornbread ice cream was a pre-dessert. We'd take these huge hunks of cornbread, soak them in milk, and then make that into a really silky, dense ice cream. Steeping milk to get a flavor, and infusing flavors that are so homey and guilty and soothing, is obviously a huge part of what we do today at Milk Bar.
6. Kimchi, Momofuku

I always joke that you can’t be in the Momofuku family and not like kimchi. It was the first thing I ate as a customer before I worked at Momofuku and when I was in the kitchen making desserts, I’d snack on it because it was always around and it has the same savory saltiness of a bag of potato chips. I love funk, I love stinky wines, I love stinky cheeses, and kimchi has that same funk. At Momofuku, [the chefs use] this old technique that has been modernized to meet the palate of someone who might not be interested in the most stinky, stank, fermented delicacy. It’s a rite of passage to put your own spin on it. At Milk Bar we make this kimchi butter and put it into a croissant with blue cheese, and we make a kimchi slaw.
7. Strawberry Shortcake, Momofuku Ssäm Bar

This was the first dessert I put on the menu at Momofuku. I was working at Momofuku but in a non-kitchen-related capacity, in the office. I’d go home every night and bake cookies and bring them in, and I think Dave just got so sick of me bringing in baked goods and not working in the kitchen that one day he said, “I’m not even going to talk to you, just go in the kitchen and bake something, I don’t care what you make.” I wanted to make something with a point of view, but something that would also resonate with people, so I settled on strawberry shortcake. The whipped cream had sour cream and heavy cream in it, the strawberries I’d toss with a little sugar, salt, and sherry vinegar. My main concern was that I make something that could sit on the menu next to pork buns.
8. Fried Apple Pie, Momofuku Ko

When we opened Ko as a tasting menu-only restaurant, no one was going to have a choice as to what dessert they got, and they were going to be buried in ten courses before dessert. I used to go to extravagant meals as a cook—I’d save up and go to Per Se or whatever—and by the time the fish hits the table, which isn’t even halfway in, you’re drunk or you’re so full, you won’t even remember what you had for dessert. So at Ko, it was almost competitive to make something that would really resonate and be memorable after ten courses. I figured that everyone loves the fried McDonald’s pie, so I made a fried apple pie and served it with a miso butterscotch that was savory and salty and sweet with umami notes, and a sour ice cream which was super tart and cold. When it hit your palate, even if you only had one bite, it was going to be damn good and you weren’t going to forget it.
9. Cereal Milk, Momofuku Ko and Milk Bar

I needed an easy dessert, and a panna cotta is easy to make and easy to serve, but very few people do it with a point of view. I had never had or seen a panna cotta that was a really interesting flavor. I didn’t realize cereal milk [flavor] was going to be good until I fed it to Dave. His eyes just sort of opened and he was like, “Holy shit!” It became such a hit at Ko that when we were opening Milk Bar, he said, “You have to make this into a milk, into an ice cream, people are going to go crazy for this.” That was a huge career-changer for me.
10. Crack Pie, wd-50 and Milk Bar

For family meal at wd~50, I decided to make a pie one night that hit somewhere between a chess pie and a gooey butter cake. It was super gooey and underbaked. I put it up for family meal and people went crazy. This guy from Australia said, “It’s like crack. You just made crack pie.” It named itself. When we opened Milk Bar, I thought, “If we have a bakery where I’m in charge, I’m selling crack pie. If nothing else, it means something to me and ten other people. And that’s enough.”

The 10 Dishes That Made My Career: Christina Tosi

1. The Non-Rice Krispies Treat

2. “Million Dollar Cake,” a.k.a. Gooey Butter Cake (Crack Pie, iteration one)

3. Cookie Dough with Pantry Items (Compost Cookie, iteration one)

4. Dairy Queen French Fries and Soft Serve

5. Cornbread Ice Cream at wd-50

6. Kimchi, Momofuku

7. Strawberry Shortcake, Momofuku Ssäm Bar

8. Fried Apple Pie, Momofuku Ko

9. Cereal Milk, Momofuku Ko and Milk Bar

10. Crack Pie, wd-50 and Milk Bar

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