How to Make a Healthy Snack
McBites = Modern McNuggets?
Slow Cooker Recipes
When Should Bars Cut You Off?
How to Scrape a Vanilla Bean
Best Riffs on Hot Chocolate
—THE CHOW 13—
CLICK THUMBNAIL FOR EACH PROFILE
enlarge imageCHRISTINA TOSI
Momofuku Milk Bar
The person responsible for Martha Stewart uttering the words, “I couldn’t wait to sample the Crack Pie,” Christina Tosi is the Andy Warhol of pastry chefs. But instead of riffing on Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s soup, Tosi uses commercial candy bars, sugared cereal, and other guilty pleasures of the industrial food complex for the desserts she invents for NYC’s three Momofuku restaurants and Momofuku Milk Bar. Her greatest hits have included the Compost Cookie: a chewy-crunchy, salty-sweet, hot mess of corn flakes, coffee grounds, graham cracker crumbs, potato chips, and butterscotch chips. And then there’s her “cereal milk,” which she makes by toasting corn flakes and steeping them in sweetened milk, and is used to flavor soft-serve ice cream, milk, and pie.
The 27-year-old, who modeled Milk Bar on Dairy Queen and told New York magazine she ate a bag of Doritos and Ben & Jerry’s for dinner the night before an interview, is a leader in the white-tablecloth backlash. Tosi’s desserts come from the same fascination with lowbrow food that has inspired the Bouluds of the world to open hot dog joints and the Jacques Torreses to erect ice cream stands. But where others are content to create yet another red velvet cupcake, Tosi is pushing haute-trash food away from kitsch into something truly new and different.
If you weren’t doing this what would you be doing?
“Eating cookie dough at home. Or being a truck driver with my dogs. Or renovating an old house and selling old clothes out of a little shop in the middle of nowhere. Or being a math teacher.”
Who was your biggest mentor and why?
“Wylie Dufresne [of WD-50, where Tosi worked prior to Momofuku] challenged me to change my way of thinking and really dissect the whys of my point of view and food perspective. [Momofuku’s] Dave Chang (don’t tell him I said so) for being a pusher and a doer, questioning everything, accepting nothing, breeding creativity out of the most challenging limitations, and making sure I’m always in just a little over my head.”
What was your most humbling moment in your current job?
“Opening Milk Bar with four people on staff. What were we thinking?”
I am so deeply over Slow Food USA. Was cool in 2000, definitely does not merit attention now. 300 picnics is the stuff of revolution? Big time boring, just like Slow Food has been for...um....the past decade? Novella deserves the shout out, awesome.
But, it's the first time you guys are doing this so I am sure it will get better!
I have to disagree-What Sam Calagione is doing for beer has brought the craft beer movement to a whole new level. Just one example is Dogfish Head's ancient ale series, or "liquid time capsules." They recreate and reinterpret ancient brewed beverages based on chemical analysis of pottery shards from archeological finds. You may think that this idea is purely novel, but the ales are intricate,...+READ
I have to disagree-What Sam Calagione is doing for beer has brought the craft beer movement to a whole new level. Just one example is Dogfish Head's ancient ale series, or "liquid time capsules." They recreate and reinterpret ancient brewed beverages based on chemical analysis of pottery shards from archeological finds. You may think that this idea is purely novel, but the ales are intricate, unconventional, and most of all delicious! Beer is the new wine, and Sam Calagione proves it.-COLLAPSE
@davina-thank you pointing me in the right direction and highlighting each illustrator in the comments box. They all rock!
HillJ -- we love our illustrators, there are four of them and we're so proud of the work that they did. They are Nathan Fox, Yuko Shimizu, Frank Stockton, and Eamo. Their credit lines are underneath each image.
Props to the "head shot" illustrator. They too deserve credit....heck, why not credit them!
Just because people have been doing coffee bars since 1988 doesn't mean they've been doing them right.
::cough::Starbucks::cough::
And no, people weren't doing anything close to what Caligione, Cilurzo, Arthur, Allagash, et al are doing now 20+ years ago. Wait a sec, how many of those guys from back then are still at it? Surprisingly few.
By your reasoning, no one should get...+READ
Just because people have been doing coffee bars since 1988 doesn't mean they've been doing them right.
::cough::Starbucks::cough::
And no, people weren't doing anything close to what Caligione, Cilurzo, Arthur, Allagash, et al are doing now 20+ years ago. Wait a sec, how many of those guys from back then are still at it? Surprisingly few.
By your reasoning, no one should get superlatives for any of this slow food, locavorism nonsense because really, no one's done anything new with that, oh, since the beginning of human civilization.-COLLAPSE
Great job on 10 of 13 picks. But picking Deb Madison in Chow 2009 is like giving Scorcese that Oscar a couple years back...the timing is wrong, just give the Lifetime Achievement Award instead. And really guys, you've picked a beer guy and a gourmet coffee guy...in 2009? NOTHING has really changed/no innovation in coffee or beer since 1988...just a few new personalities who hit the market more...+READ
Great job on 10 of 13 picks. But picking Deb Madison in Chow 2009 is like giving Scorcese that Oscar a couple years back...the timing is wrong, just give the Lifetime Achievement Award instead. And really guys, you've picked a beer guy and a gourmet coffee guy...in 2009? NOTHING has really changed/no innovation in coffee or beer since 1988...just a few new personalities who hit the market more right, that's all.-COLLAPSE
I'm not getting this pick. Micro beer is 25 years old, and the 'special ingredients' story is way overdone. This guy is just slightly more interesting and his beers are just slightly better.