>>male presenter: all right. well, good afternooneveryone. thanks for coming out to see chef christina here. the format today will be--justto give you the rules of the game --we'll have an awesome talk by chef christina injust a moment. and it will be followed by some q&a. so, if you have a question, please go to themic because we are recording this on youtube. so, they need to be able to hear you in thevirtual world as well as the real world. but with that, i'm sure you guys all know whyyou're here today. chef christina is here from momofuku milk bar from new york city. you know her for her compost cookies, hercrack pie, her blueberry cookies and many,
many other fun and delicious, magically satisfyingtreats. so, i'm sure you guys do not wanna hear any more of me. so with that, chef christinafrom momofuku milk bar. [applause and cheering] >>christina tosi: hi everybody. can everyonehear me ok? awesome. this is an insane turnout. [laughing] thank you to everybody for coming.i usually--. we've been doing talks like this. the book came out on october 25th, so we'vebeen doing this for about two and a half weeks on tour. and it's usually a much smaller group. andmy first question is always like, "ok, who's ever been to momofuku?" or, "who owns themomofuku cookbook?" or, "who's been to milk
bar?" and every once in a while, you get ahand or two raised and it's fun and it's fun to know that people came just out of curiosity. but it's pretty amazing [laughing] to seehow many of you came because you know exactly why you're here. so, i will spare you withthose silly questions. so, momofuku milk bar. momofuku is this tiny little restaurant groupthat started in the east village about seven years ago by dave chang, the chef/owner ofthe momofuku restaurants. there was momofuku noodle bar, momofuku ssã¤mbar, momofuku ko, which is like a tasting menu only restaurant. you have to get yourreservation online only. compete for your seats. momofuku milk bar opened next aboutthree years ago in november. and we also have
mã¡ pãªche, which is in midtown outside ofthe east village. and dave recently opened a momofuku restaurantin sydney, australia in the star city casino. and it's going really well. we now have fourlittle bakeries, or four little retail milk bar locations in new york. we have our originaleast village location. we have a little location that is part of mã¡ pãªche in midtown. we just opened a spot on the upper west side--87thand columbus near central park. and we have our kitchen in williamsburg, brooklyn wherewe also have a little store. so, hopefully many of you already own the momofuku cookbookand you know the history of the momofuku restaurants and you know a little bit about dave and thementality and the attitude and the passion
behind what we do at momofuku in general. i started working at momofuku about six yearsago. i was, i am still, but i was a home baker growing up. i grew up with a bunch of grandmasand aunts and a mom that really loved baking. and i also have a very sweet tooth. so, iloved mixing cookie dough and eating it more so than baking it. but i started there with my love for bakingand all things sweet-- cake batters and frostings and all of those sorts of things. and i wentto college and i studied applied mathematics [laughter] and the italian language becausei loved doing those things. i love learning and being stimulated and discovering thesethings.
my mom's an accountant, so i think that'swhere the mathematics comes into play, but i ended up graduating from school mostly toappease my parents. and i thought to myself that none of those things would really fitfor me as a profession and that i wanted something more active and creative and stimulating inthis way. and i feel like you all have figured out agreat way to have that in your lives, but for me, i thought, "i want to work in a kitchen.i want to be a pastry chef. i want to make what my real passion is into my profession.so, i moved to new york to, sort of, sight-unseen--. i had only ever been to new york city forthree hours once when i was a teenager. and i just felt this draw to new york. andi thought, "i'm just gonna move to new york
and i'm gonna go to pastry school and i'mgonna be a pastry chef and that's what i'm gonna do." and it just made sense in my head.so, i just told my parents one day like, "hey mom, this is what i'm gonna do." and without ever really speaking about itmore, like any further beyond that, i just had it set in my head. so, i did it. and iwent to the french culinary institute and i studied pastry arts and i ended up workingin a bunch of fine-dining restaurants in the city. six-day work weeks, sixteen-, eighteen-hourdays, paid almost nothing because i just loved it so much. i loved the challenge. i lovedlearning. i loved that i was making a life
for myself and doing what i really loved todo and that there was no end. exhaustion was never really came into mind. but as i was working in these fine-diningrestaurants and working my way up the ranks of pastry kitchens and pastry departments,i got jumbled up because these fine-dining restaurants usually are very detail-orientedand they're very precise and they're very--. i can only ever use the adjective "finicky"because for me in my head, i see it as finicky. i see these delicate touilles that top a chocolatesoufflã© as finicky. and six different sauces and picking herbs and putting them on plate,for my personality, was like i loved the challenge of it and i loved learning, but for me, itwas far too finicky for me.
and so, i started to worry that i would neverreally actually become a pastry chef and i would never make it to the top because itwouldn't really be honest to me and it wouldn't meet my need and my desire for being creativeand being in a creative profession that had my voice. and so, i stepped out. i ended up steppingout of the kitchen in new york and trying to figure out what i wanted to do. and i metdave through wylie dufresne, who's the chef and owner at wd~50 in the lower east side.and it was actually the last kitchen that i worked in as a pastry cook. and if you're not familiar with it, it's veryhigh-technique, very high, forward-thinking
in terms of food and the presentation of foodand pushing boundaries with what you can do with flavors and techniques and food. andwylie ended up introducing me to dave to help him with this thing called a haccp plan, whichis a hazard analysis plan for sous-vide cooking. if you're not familiar, it's like a large-scalefood saver machine called a cryovac machine that creates an oxygen-free environment thatyou can cook in. and the health department in new york city had all of these brand new,very stringent regulations and dave needed help. so, i had taught myself how to write theseplans in working at wd~50 as a pastry cook. and wylie was just like, "can you help myfriend out?" so, i went and helped dave out.
and he just offered me a job. he just said,"ok, you know how to do this sort of silly, dorky, overextended, haccp planning. you taught yourself so why don't you justcome work for me?" he had noodle bar and ssã¤m bar at the time. he was just starting to breakout in terms of his presence in food and in the food world in new york. and he had a very,very small team of people. and i just said, "ok. i'll do it." because for me, i really didn't think i wasgonna make it as this pastry chef. and not because i wouldn't be able to get there withhard work and determination, but because i just thought maybe i have it all wrong andi'm just not creative enough or i don't have
that fine-tuned, precisioned attention todetail enough to be this fancy pastry chef. so, i took the job with dave because--andi just said, "yeah. i'll do it. let's do it. i'll work for you." and there was no job role.it was very un-kitchen related. it was like, "ok, well you know how to type on a computer,so how about you do payroll." [laughter] "and you type faster than me so how about you typesome recipes or the bathroom's clogged. call the plumber. figure out how to do itand." and so, i loved that. i loved that challenge. i loved not knowing what i was doing and figuringit out and i loved knowing that there was this huge outlet of things for me to learnhow to do and to figure how to do it. and i loved that sort of uphill battle challengethat every day was gonna be different and
every day i was gonna be on my feet. and everyday, i was gonna have to find a creative solution. and that, for me, was--. it met enough ofthat need of what i wanted to do in a day. so, i did it. but the thing was, i'd go towork every day and do that and then i'd end up coming home and baking in my kitchen, homelate at night because that was my routine. it's what i love to do. it was like, no matterhow many hours i spent at work doing god knows what, all i really wanted to do was go homeand bake. and it was my peace and my happiness in myday. so, i would do it and i would go home. i'd bake. i'd bake one or two or three thingsand i'd end up just bringing them in the next day to work, to dave, and two or three otherpeople that worked at momofuku at the time,
and feeding them because i couldn't leaveit in my kitchen. then i couldn't go home and bake again 'causei wouldn't have an empty pan to bake something into. and dave would just gobble it all up.[laughter] and he would always, after a few days or a few weeks of it, he would joke that,"we should put this brownie or this cookie or whatever it was that i threw together,on the menu." because at the time, noodle bar and ssã¤mbar were very, very masculine, driven with masculinity in loud, loud music, loud flavorsenvironment, but there was absolutely no value placed on dessert. there wasn't even desserton the menu, which, even in new york city, it's strange to have a restaurant where there'sno coffee, there's no tea, there's no dessert.
you sit down. the music's playing loud. youorder your food. you get it. it comes out warm. you eat it real fast because it's delicious.you pay your bill and you leave. and so, i always thought he was joking about--. ok,i did, i just threw together these brownies at home of like whatever was in my cupboard. it was more just an exercise of peace at hometo bake than it was intentional. and one day i showed up and halfway through the day, hewas gobbling down whatever i had eaten and he was just like, "go. go. get into the kitchenand make something for dessert tonight because i don't wanna talk about it anymore. i'm over it. this is clearly what you loveto do. finish payroll and then go and bake
something [laughter] and we're gonna put iton the menu tonight because i'm over this. i don't want to talk about it anymore." [laughter] and so, i freaked out. a lot. and silently,because there was a show-no-mercy attitude. that's kitchen mentality in any city. thatwas sort of how i was raised, too, with the stubbornness. and i did it. i made a dessert. it was a strawberryshortcake with my own twist on it. it's in the momofuku cookbook. and it was fine. noone died. a few people ordered it. a few people ate it. it was good. so, i came back the nextday and did my normal job of whatever it was
that came up. and then i made it again. and again. and eventually,i ended up putting desserts on the menus at the momofuku restaurants. little by little,i had my fingerprints on the menus at those restaurants. and it was one of those "whatdo you put on the menu at a restaurant that doesn't serve dessert?" there's not really any value placed on dessert,but these guys clearly love sweets because when i bring in these platters of things,they're gone in minutes. and it's that momofuku means lucky peach in japanese, but dave isa korean-american chef, but we use local ingredients, but we use french technique.
and sometimes, we put a pasta on the menu.and what in the world do you make for dessert in those terms? and it's just like, well,all i know about working here is that it's faced-paced, the flavors are big, they'rebold. they're in your face. everything always tastes delicious. it's so delicious that you wanna eat it soquickly and then get up and leave. [chuckles] and so, i would do whatever i could to makea delicious, flavorful, seasonal thing with a twist and a personality because that wasthe only anchor that i had in knowing momofuku and in knowing the food of momofuku and thepersonalities of momofuku. so, i did that for about a year. and it wasjust me and i would just find whatever space
i had on a prep table in one of the restaurantsand just throw as many things together as i could. and one day, there was a vacant laundromatnext to ssã¤m bar on 2nd avenue and 13th street. and they lost their lease. they were takingall the washers and dryers out. and dave found whatever little corner i was occupying ona prep table and ran up to me and said, "the laundromat is going out of business. somebody'sgonna move in and take over the space and run momofuku out of--. they're gonna destroy us. they're gonna crumbleour empire." which, of course, is not gonna happen. but he's has this paranoia about him and thisenergy about him because of it. and it was
just like, "we gotta get in there. let's opena bakery. do you wanna do it?" like, let's open this bakery. and this is like, bringingup a concept that had never been spoken about between the two of us. i'm sure it was clear that i loved cookies[giggles] and i loved baking cookies. there was never a cookie on the menu at ssã¤m bar,at noodle bar, at ko, because that just wasn't the vibe of those restaurants. and i was justlike, "sure. yeah, sure, i'll do it." in my head, like every little girl dreams abouthaving a bakery. [laughter] so, "sure, i'll do it." and i was like, "i'mserious. do you wanna do it? if you say yes, we have to do it right now." and it was like,"yeah, ok. i said yes. let's do it."
and so, we just did it. and it was like oneof those phone calls home to my mom, or was similar to, "hey, so mom. i'm gonna move tonew york city and go pastry school and become a pastry chef and i'm gonna get on a traintomorrow." and it was the same sort of thing where itwas like, "hey mom, i'm gonna open this bakery and it's gonna open in like a month and i'lltell you when that is" sort of thing. and then you just do it. and it's being a personof your word and suppressing all of the fear and doubt and all of those things in yourhead and just pushing through. and i like to say we opened the bakery overnight,though it took a little while to renovate this laundromat into a bakery. but it endedup being this bakery that, in my head, it
makes sense to the way momofuku and the momofukurestaurants and the menus are in terms of food and flavors and curiosities. but we ended up opening this bakery. and ilike to describe it as this quirky bakery with an american baked goods sensibility,but with a little bit of a twist, or with a little more personality, because insteadof chocolate chip cookies, we sell cornflake chocolate chip marshmallow cookies. or, instead of chocolate chip cookies, wesell compost cookies that have chocolate chips in them, but they also have butterscotch chipsand pretzels and potato chips and coffee grounds and stuff like that. and making the menu wasjust making a bunch of stuff that i knew i
loved baking at home or making this cookiedough and then throwing whatever i had in my cupboard into this cookie dough. and it made sense in my head. and i was toobusy to worry about it not making sense in anyone else's head. and i sort of got trickedinto being this pastry chef that i didn't know that i was, or that i could be, and iended up making this menu that i thought, "i'm just gonna make what makes sense in myhead and what's honest to what i love to bake and what i know how to bake and what i knowhow to bake for somebody or for a family meal or what have you." and it's honest and it feels right and theni'm not gonna worry about anything else. and
so, everything that we sell i think makessense in our head, though most people ask how we come up with it or how it came to be.and so, we brought a lot of stuff for you guys to taste so that you could understandour food beyond--. strip it down for you beyond just a cookie.so for me, making this menu for a bakery was like, "ok, i've been training to be a pastrychef for many years. what do pastry chefs, where do you start? do you start with flavor?do you start with texture? do you start with technique?" and for me, i would strip it down to my favoritethings that i loved making as a pastry cook in other people's pastry kitchens. and i'ma real creature of texture. i love crunch.
even if it's not crunch as a texture, it'ssilky smooth or it's sandy or it's crumby or what have you. and so, we started playing around with thesecrumbs and crunches, which makes sense in my head, but there are these pops of colorand flavor and texture. the cook book is laid out with these basic techniques and ingredientsthat we love to use in our kitchen when we start to bake, when we start to develop ourmenu and a new recipe. one of the things that we love making is acrunch and we brought cornflake crunch today. and it's made with corn flakes, so that alwaysmakes people smile. and it's a flavor that most people know and can relate to. and wetoss it with some sugar and some salt and
some melted butter and some milk powder. and we just spread it out on a sheet pan andtoast it off in the oven so you get an idealized version of corn flakes or maybe an idealizedversion of frosted flakes, or something like that. in most pastry kitchens you'll use somethinglike this that has this flavor and texture and broken down organic nature and you'lluse it to just put on the bottom of a plate to hold a scoop of ice cream so it doesn'tslide around on the plate when it goes to the table. but for me, i thought, "well, i wanna makethis crunch or this crumb, and what else can i do with it?" and so, we would just playaround with flavors until we got a lot of
fun, different crunches. we make one withritz crackers. we make one with fruity pebbles. we make one with pretzels. it's basicallyanything that already has a flavor and a texture that you just crumble up with your hands,butter, sugar, salt, maybe some milk powder. you bake it off. and then, we'll take theselittle things, these little snacky items and we'll see how many places we can put them--onrestaurant menus and on our bakery menu. and we make a corn flake, chocolate chip,marshmallow cookie. and it's a chocolate chip cookie, but we fold this corn flake crunchinto it and we put these mini marshmallows in it. and all of a sudden, we have this ampedup version of a chocolate chip cookie. and we'll take this corn flake crunch andwe'll use it as an ice cream topping. or,
we'll take it and we'll crunch it down a littlebit more and we'll press it into a pie tin and use it as a pie crust instead of youraverage pie crust because why not? and i don't wanna make a pie crust. i have this great snacky thing. i mean, ipersonally will just--. we have little cups to pass around for you guys to taste. butit's good to just throw back or make it into a trail mix or make it into a granola. andinstead of starting off with something like a pie crust or instead of starting off withjust looking at flour, sugar, and butter as a dough, how can i start from a more creativestandpoint? and then that's my staple ingredient thati use and i see how far i can push it. you
can layer it in a cake for flavor and textureand a visual appeal. and you can play with the flavor of corn flakes. you can play withthe flavor of cereal. and you can substitute it in and out. and so, we start with these--. instead ofstarting with just butter and sugar, instead of starting with just a cake recipe, we'llstart with these crumbs and these crunches because you're starting from like a platformof something a little bit more creative or a little different. or, you're starting with something that doesn'talready exist in everybody else's kitchen. we make this thing called a milk crumb. andit's like a sandy burst of flavor. and in
a lot of pastry kitchens, in savory kitchens,they make them. sometimes they call them crumbs. sometimes they call them sand. it was a very90s thing with the adria brothers. and even at wd~50, we would make red onion sand andsoil. we would make coffee soil. and it's just this sandy burst of flavor. but wheni started menu developing for milk bar, i thought, "i love this technique." i would stand in the kitchen when no one waslooking and just eat these crumbs as my snack. and i would pour milk over them and eat themas cereal. and so i thought, "well i'm gonna take that technique and see what i can withit in terms of flavor that pushes it beyond what i already know." and again, we woulduse this and we would drape it over a plate
of foie gras at wd~50 for flavor and for texture. we'd sprinkle a little down on a plate andput a scoop of ice cream or a quenelle of sorbet on it. but for me, i thought, "well,what else can we do with this?" and it's milk powder. it's milk powder. i don't know ifanyone's mom or dad ever used milk powder and hydrated it with water and made them drinkmilk as a kid. i did. [laughs] and it was gross back then,but i thought, "let's use this milk powder." which is a staple in any pastry chef's kitchenbecause you typically put it in ice cream to give it more body and flavor. "let's makean idealized version of what milk should taste like."
like, in my head, milk should be sweet andmilky and a little savory, but to have this balance that regular milk doesn't really have.my mom used to make me drink skim milk as a kid and i hated it. so, i want to take whati think milk should taste like and then make that into a crumb. so, it's flour. it's butter. it's sugar. it'smilk powder as the dried flavored ingredient that goes into it. and we put a little whitechocolate in here. and then we take this crumb and we fold it into a cookie dough and wehave a cookie called the blueberry cream cookie. i think about milk crumbs and i go, "ok. it'smilky. it's creamy." so then i think about peaches and cream. andthen i think about blueberries and cream.
and then i think about blueberry muffin. andthen i think about the best part of a blueberry muffin, which is the tippy top of the muffinwhere it's a little fudgy and a little crunchy. and we make it into a cookie. so, we takethese milk crumbs and we fold them into a cookie dough with dried blueberries. we'llalso take it and we'll use it in a plated dessert for one of the restaurants and we'llmake a peach sorbet because peaches and cream makes sense to everybody. and then we take some graham crackers andwe'll blend them down into a puree that we like to call a ganache 'cause it representsa little bit more texture and body in the world of cooking and pastry chef-dom. andall of a sudden, you have milk crumbs and
peaches for a peaches and cream element. and then you have this peach sorbet and thisgraham cracker ganache and it gives you this peach cobbler effect. and all of a suddenwe're just using the same crumb we use in so many different things, but we're figuringout how many different places we can re-purpose it and how creative we can get with it. we layer it in a pistachio cake that has layersof pistachio cake and lemon curd and these milk crumbs and pistachio frosting. and itgives a nuttiness and a floralness and this sweet, milkiness that brings out both andenhances it. it gives it texture and it gives it a visual pop.
and it makes sense and it's fun and it tastesgood. and all of a sudden, we've created five or six desserts out of two things that wereally just like snacking on in our kitchen. [giggles] we also have a birthday crumb that'ssort of like--. did anybody's mom or dad or sister or aunt or uncle ever make them a boxedfunfetti cake for your birthday? [chuckles] for me, that's the best birthday cake ever.and we thought, "ok, we're gonna be this quirky bakery with baked goods. it's personal tous. we want it to have personality and we want it to--. all baked goods should feellike home and should be made with love." and for me, it's like that funny dichotomyof well, this box cake mix that you just add eggs and oil to, it tastes like home becausethat's what you make for your kid when you're
trying to raise a family and you wanna makea birthday cake. so, we took our love for that funfetti box cake mix and we totallydeconstructed it to, "so many people make this box cake mix from a box. how about if we figure out how to make itfrom scratch?" because those flavors are the flavors of home and the flavors that you relateto and that you remember and that send this signal or this eye--. they make your eyesget wider. and how do we make that flavor from scratch?" and so, we would take the back of a box of--.we take the funfetti cake mix home and we look at the back of the box and just startdeconstructing. like, how are we gonna recreate
these flavors in our kitchen? and we figuredout how to remake the cake from scratch. we figured out how to make frosting that tastesjust like it's that shelf-stable canned frosting [laughter] that you eat through your childhoodand through college. and we ended up making these crumbs out of it as well. and it's thesame ingredients that are in a cake, but instead of making it into a cake with butter and eggsand oil, we make it into a little crumb with just a little bit of melted butter. and we'll take it and we'll fold it into acookie to make a confetti cookie. and we'll layer it into that birthday cake that we makefrom scratch for more texture and more flavor. and we go. that's how we go from there. westart with these crumbs or these crunches.
we make this milk called cereal milk and it'smeant to taste like what's left in your bowl after you eat all the cereal out of it, whichis a flavor that everybody knows whether it's made with lucky charms or made with capn crunchor made with golden grahams. everybody knows that flavor of milk. like, everyone's done that before and so,that's a recipe that we'll start with in our kitchen and we'll see how many places we canput it. we make it into drinking milk. we make it into ice cream. we set it with a littlebit of gelatin and we make into a panna cotta. and all of a sudden, we have one simple approachand one simple flavor and we have three or four new menu items. we'll take this cornflake crunch and press it into a crust and
then fill it with cereal milk ice cream becauseit just makes sense. and we're just using things that are already in our kitchen. we're using these recipes that are alreadyin our kitchen. so when we went to write the cook book and tell the story of milk bar andhow it came to be and the attitude and the mentality behind it and the sense of humorbehind it, we broke it down based on these recipes which we jokingly refer to as "motherrecipes." and we relate it back to french cooking. andin french cooking you have mother sauces and it's this well-known principle that if youknow how to make these mother sauces, if you can master these mother sauces in french cooking,they gateway towards mastering french cooking
as a whole is yours. and these mother sauces are the gateway tomastering everything else in french cooking. and so, we approach milk bar with the samementality, where it's like, if you know--. there's cereal milk. if you know how to makecereal milk, you have this gateway into what we do at milk bar. once you get the corn flake crunch down orthe milk crumb down, you have this world of desserts opened up to you. and that's howwe do it in our kitchen. we get creative by starting with really creative, staple, pantryingredients. we make thing called liquid cheesecake because if i were gonna be a fancy pastrychef, i might make blue cheese cheesecake
and serve it with figs or poached pears orsomething like that. but i'm not. [laughter] i want under bakedcheesecake because that's the best part of cheesecake for me. it's that little ring inthe center when somebody doesn't bake it all the way and i just wanna spoon that out. so,if i'm gonna be a pastry chef, i know that cheesecake is a staple thing to pastry chefs,but my cheesecake's gonna be liquid cheesecake because that's the best part of cheesecakefor me. and i'm not afraid to say it. and it mightbe a little low brow, but it gets a laugh and you get it because that's like everyone'sdirty little secret. [chuckles] and that's what we have in our kitchen and that's whatwe use as our jumping-off point. and that's
how the cookbook is laid out. it's like, wemake this liquid cheesecake. we layer it on this bread dough and make acinnamon bun pie because if you think about cinnamon buns, it's bread dough and it's cinnamonand sugar and light brown sugar. and then you roll it up and then you lather it in creamcheese frosting. so, i'm gonna take this liquid cheesecake i have and i'm gonna use it toget towards this idea of a cinnamon bun in a different shape and a different vehicle. but the flavors are there and they make senseand everyone knows the flavor of a cinnamon bun. but we make it into a pie with liquidcheesecake. [giggles] and i think that personality and that sort of honesty about baking andbaked goods and pastries is very much the
path that we take when we made milk bar atthe very beginning and when we're coming up with new menu items every day. and that is really important to us. and ithink the underlying thing for us is i started making these desserts at this restaurant whereeverything's loud and masculine and in your face. and dessert didn't exist before. andin order for it to be worth my time, it's not like i want dessert to be the shiningstar, but damnit, i came to work today and i worked really hard and i want everythingthat we serve as a dessert to stand out. but at a tasting-menu only restaurant whenyou're already getting stuffed with twelve courses and the last two courses are dessert,it's like, how do you make your dessert memorable
and how do you make it poignant? and how doyou make it stand out? or, how do you make people want to remember their 13th and their14th course when they've been sitting down and eating for two hours already? and i think that's always the underlying motivation,the underlying, "check" this is it, we're done. we're done recipe testing. this is makingit to the menu and well, it still needs some work. and some of our recipes are immediately--.[snaps fingers] they hit you. you have it. you know you've got it. and other ones arelike, we're constantly tasting and testing because it has to pass that taste test where,even in our kitchen full of cookie dough and cake batter, you just want to keep going backand eating and munching and almost making
yourself sick because it's got to hit homelike that. and it doesn't have to be a childhood memoryand it doesn't have to be a breakfast memory, but those are things that help strike a chordwith people. it makes your eyes open. it makes you wanna come back for more. it makes youwant to beg your friend before they get on their flight to go the bakery and pick upa bunch of cookies because somehow you have a relationship with it. and that's what baked goods are. that's whatthey are for me. i have a relationship with oatmeal raisin cookies because my grandmaused to make them for me all the time when i was a kid. and i don't want anybody else'soatmeal raisin cookie. but if there's something
about a dessert that taps in to that cinnamony,sugary, oatmealy, raisony flavors on any level, i'm sold. i will never forget it because that'show i was raised with baked goods. and that's for me, what feels like home and what impressesme the most and those are the home run dishes and those are the things i remember. and it'sthe same thing with savory food, but we're in the dessert world and so we're constantlylooking at it as a competition on a level where it's like, how do we tap into that aswell? and it has to be the most delicious thingthat anyone's ever ate. otherwise, it doesn't make it onto the menu because that takes extratime and it takes extra effort, but that's how you make a bakery like this and a restaurantgroup like momofuku and a dessert program
like we have. and that is the essence of what we do at momofukuand what we do at milk bar and what you get in the cook book beyond just the recipes of--.ok, you get the compost cookie recipe. i promise. but you get this personality and this approachand this realness about it where you understand where it comes from. and you're one of us. i mean, we let you intoour kitchen and our mentality and our point of view. we tell bad jokes in the book. [giggles]and we break it all down. so, that's what you're taking home. but i wanna see what kindof questions you guys have because that's personally--.
i get a little itchy when it's time to talk,but my favorite part is answering questions because the dialogue of it i think is reallyimportant. so, who has questions? come on. yes. >>female #1: hi, my name is julie. i lovemilk bar. i went there like, three years ago. >>christina tosi: oh, at the very beginning. >>female #1: i got engaged near there withmy husband and his brother. so, i'm really connected to the food and everything. so,when i went back recently, your cookies changed a little bit. so, they were packaged. theytasted different. the shapes were different. so i wanted tohear you speak a little bit about how growing
and expanding has changed your recipe andif you think it's still--. i mean, it's still really delicious, but it's different. so wehad a different experience going back recently than we did three years ago. >>christina tosi: yeah. so, we opened milkbar in the east village three years ago. and we did all of our baking on site. and it wasactually just me and two other people that opened the bakery and we worked day and night.we had no clue what we were doing. we just knew that we had a delicious productthat we stood behind. and we had very little resources and very little equipment. and weended up working from 6am until two or three o'clock in the morning for days and days anddays and months. and it ended up being such
a huge--. we baked, we mixed everything on site. webaked everything on site. we sold everything ourselves. and it ended up being this crazysuccess, line out the door, from open till close, from 8am till midnight we would havea line out the door. and we would kill ourselves just--. the compost cookie. this is everyone's favorite.we would end up mixing this dough so many times over the course of the day, and scoopingit and trying to find room in our small refrigerators to find a place to chill it before we bakedit. and then we would scoop them into paper bags on the fly while they were still kindof warm in hopes that people were gonna eat
them right away. and if they didn't, they were gonna greasetheir bags and break down because we were so overwhelmed with it. and i think that'swhat made it such a success at first because it felt so personal and human. and it's still very personal to us, but thething that people forget sometimes with bakeries, we've had a crash course on not only how toopen a bakery, but how to be a business person on this really weird level that was completelyunslated is that you can sell a lot of cookies to pay your rent in new york city, to payhardworking people a wage that is not poverty, where they're not living with six people inbunk beds with bed bugs.
in order to pay people that believe in whatyou do and what they do an honest wage, you have to sell a lot of cookies. and we wereput in this space because we thought we would just be this cute little bakery that soldbreads and flavored butters and cookies. and the demand of the business and the cookiesales was so huge that we were all of a sudden in this small space with this dedicated teamthat was getting paid next to nothing and working day in and day out. and it was like,we're never gonna be able to sustain this. we're gonna kill ourselves trying to makeenough cakes and layer them all on this 250 or 300 square foot kitchen space. and we gotto the point that we were taking refrigerators and illegally putting them in portions ofwhere our customers would stand in line and
wait or try and eat and lock them. and illegally do it through the health departmentbecause it was like, you're gonna get mad if i don't have a compost cookie. and i'mgonna get mad if i don't have a compost cookie for you, but i don't know how else to do it.and it got to the point that we were shipping cookies because people want to have cookieson the west coast if they can't make it to visit us. and we got to the point where we just startedtaking tables out of the bakery for patrons and we would just start stacking boxes oftins and stuff like that. we had no shipping area, so we would just be like, "you can'thave this table. you cannot eat crack pie
at this table because i'm gonna put an uglytablecloth on it and i'm gonna pack stuff and send it up." and all of a sudden, we were affronted withwhat do we do? and what's important? and what's our vision? and we ended up being like, "weneed a bigger boat. if we're gonna do this, we need a bigger boat." and we're gettingto the point that we're almost selling enough cookies that we can start to pay people awage that's just somewhere near honest. it's not even close to it, but we're to thepoint where we can provide health insurance for our employees, which is unheard of inthe restaurant industry, especially in new york. and we have to keep going because we'realmost to the point where we can do it all.
we can have it all and we can have lives andwe can do what we love. and we ended up getting a bigger kitchen in williamsburg. and believeit or not, our cookie recipes haven't changed at all. we use the exact same ingredients,but the things that have changed are we make them off site. and we used to scoop every single cookie byhand, but all of a sudden, we were affronted with, "nobody scoops fast enough for me."the test of our kitchen used to be like, "ok, you can get hired if you can scoop cookiesalmost as fast as me because i'm gonna love it more than anyone and i'm gonna be fasterthan anyone, so i'm gonna scoop scoop scoop." and then all of a sudden, it was like, "we'regonna need to hire 12 people just to scoop
enough cookies." and so, we had to be smartabout our strategy in how we do it. we package everything, honestly because in new york city,you are not allowed to bake product off site and send it to another location--. you're not allowed to bake something on siteand send it to another location to sell retail unless it's packaged and it's labeled withevery ingredient and every potential allergy. and all of a sudden, it's like we love whatwe do on the same level, but we have to figure out a way to make a concession here or thereso that we can, so everyone can know what a compost cookie is. and you don't get as big of a bit of a pretzelin it now, but if we write a cook book, then
people can still make it at home and it'sstill special to us even though it's not. we're not. we used to be in this 250 squarefoot space with this small group of five or six people that would just kill each other,like lifting things up and over and under. and now, we're in this huge kitchen and it'slike, how do we maintain our sense of family and our passion for it and our love for it?and we still do it every day. and we sometimes joke that we do not miss that space at allbecause it was so hard. but we miss it so much because we know exactly what the placesthat we had to make the concessions and that we had to say, "you wanna know what? i amnot gonna be here every day to scoop cookies and to be the only one to scoop cookies."
if i could, i would. but i can't. and we stillstand behind what we do. >>female #1: well, thank you for scoopingthe cookie the day that i was there. >>male #1: hey, christina. thanks so muchfor coming. your passion is so obvious to all of us. you've already actually startedtalking about this, but i remember i went to the noodle bar the first time and now,every time i hear about you guys, you have an uptown location and there's a bakery. you're going to sydney. and you were alreadygoing along those lines, but how do you maintain this kind of momofuku sense, like in the passionand all that. 'cause you guys have grown. 'cause you guys seem like interminable, right?it's like every time--. there's nothing gonna
stop you guys, right? [laughter] i mean, the passion is so obvious and theinnovativeness is so cool. how do you maintain that? what is it that keeps you guys special? >>christina tosi: it's really hard. i mean,i think that having a personality and maintaining your love for it is so important and it'sone of those things that no one talks about. and i want my cookie or i want my bowl oframen and i want it now. and the attitude and the personality behindit is what makes it and what drives it and what keeps it going. and it's something thatwe probably spend hours talking about in our kitchen. in milk bar, we spent hours talkingabout each one of our cooks and each one of
our employees and where they're at and howcan we get everyone to contribute and know that they're part of this family. and we'll do everything from like, "ok, we'rerecipe testing or we're menu developing for the next momofuku noodle bar soft serve flavors.who has an idea? fall is coming up. i don't care if you're a dishwasher. i don't careif you are the one that puts the stickers on the backs of the bags of cookies. you're here for a reason and you have andyou know momofuku and you know milk bar at a level. and i'm like, what's next? you tellme. how are we gonna do this together and how are we gonna drive it together?"
and i think creating that sense of familyand care and being like, if i have to put a cookie in a bag with a label on it to makesure that you're here and you can make a living and you can be a part of it, then that's whatwe're gonna do. how are we gonna do this? and so, i think it's about hiring good peopleand banding together and figuring out a way to continue to perpetuate the message andthe passion. and the rest of it comes organically. i mean,the rest of it like, gut checking and it's like, "i don't know if i wanna open a milkbar in australia." it would be awesome to live in australia, but is that the consensus?for milk bar, it's like we have this team and we're a team and if we move to australia,that means part of our team and our family's
gonna move away and is that what we wannado? can we sustain it? can we maintain it? andthat's the question that happens every time we open a new momofuku, whether it's a savoryrestaurant or it's a milk bar. it’s like, why are we doing it? how are we doing it?is this what we wanna do? and it becomes this very cerebral thing whereyou think like, "you're cooks. you're chefs. you come up with new menu things and you putthem on the menu and they're great." and it ends up being this much more business savvy,cerebral family meeting time sort of thing about it. and i think that's the part of having a restaurantgroup and running restaurants and running
a bakery that people forget and miss, butit actually is a huge portion of our day and our week. and figuring out, how do you doit? you have to constantly change. you have to constantly learn. you have to eat out. you have to take in.you have to do all those things. and how do you keep with it? and how do you keep fresh?and how do you keep a personality? and how do you keep your stuff trendy, but not trendy?you know what i mean? trendy, but not trendy. how do you stand on your own island and doit with a group of people? and i don't know what the answer is. all i can tell you isthat it's something that we spend a huge amount of time on, figuring out and talking about.and every--. we change. we change every, every,
every, every single day. like, "ok, we think this was a great idea.let's do it today." and then three days later, it's like, "that's a terrible idea. let'snot do it at all." or, "i'm gonna paint the floor over here 'cause it's gonna make everyonefeel great about working this station." and we just constantly change and that's how westay. we're never stagnant. we constantly--. whetherit's something big or something small, or something that goes on the menu or how wetray up cookies before they get baked off in the oven or whatever it is, and we justconstantly stay in over our head, always. [laughs]
>>male #1: cool. you haven't stumbled yet.i didn't hear anything i didn't like. so, thanks. >>christina tosi: thank you. >>female #2: i just had a quick question aboutwhat would be the one thing that you could bake literally all day and not get tired of? >>christina tosi: that's a great question.i mean, for me, i feel like the answer is always cookie dough [giggles] because mixingit, eating it, baking it. honestly, we were doing a book talk yesterday night at omnivoreand someone was like, "i currently work in a bakery, but i think i wanna work in a restaurantand don't you miss like working service and
plating desserts?" and i was like, "no, i don't miss it at all."and the reason that i knew i wanted a bakery and love what i do is because i could do anyof those things all day every day. if i had to stand there and put cookies in a bag allday every day, i would happily do it and it would be my favorite activity. 'cause it would mean that somebody's, thatmany people are eating the blueberry and cream cookie. and that for me is like, i'll do whateverit takes and it never gets old. >>female #2: thank you. and will you be makingthem for the holidays there? >>christina tosi: making the blueberry andcream cookies for the holidays? for the holidays,
we have planned to take the corn flake chocolatechip marshmallow cookie and crush up candy canes and peppermints and fold them in. therecipe is also in the cook book. it's one of our favorite things to do overthe holidays. one, because no one wants to say good bye to any of the cookies out here.so, you have to make a holiday cookie within the realm of the current offerings becauseif you take the compost cookie away or the corn cookie away, i'll tell you what. there'sgonna be hell to pay. >>female #2: thank you. >>female #3: hey christina. thank you so muchfor coming today on behalf of everyone at google. i think that's it for questions. iknow a lot of people still wanna get their
books and they're available back there. andi know she also brought a lot of treats. >>christina tosi: yeah. we brought a ton ofcookies and crumbs and crunches. so, come up. [applause]