Eating L.A. Before It Eats Itself: Tosi is queen of the modern bakery with Milk Bar

After years of anticipation, Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar has finally planted its roots on the West Coast. Located in one of the busiest areas of Los Angeles, the shop has welcomed lines of eager people winding around Melrose Avenue like any of its popular streetwear stores. Milk Bar has been the subject of much apprehension beyond its reputation in New York, Tosi’s creation was featured in the pastry season of Netflix’s “Chef’s Table.” If there’s anything more exciting than a popular bakery crossing the country, it’s one that opened a season of a Netflix show.

I have a sweet tooth. I like candy and cookies, and after every meal I need something for dessert. Bakeries are a particular joy, and making sweets is a pastime that brings happiness not only to myself, but also to those around me. Milk Bar was born from a similar notion from the bottom of Tosi’s heart: a love of sugar.

Milk Bar has a creative lineup of signature desserts, entrenched in nostalgia and ingredients familiar to the American palate: cornflakes, sweet corn, sprinkles. While the sweets taste like childhood, they also taste patriotic. There is no lavish presentation of laminated dough; no extravagant displays of French technique or scientific method. Instead, the cookies taste like cookies, the cake like cake — an elevated, unique take on classic bake sale sweets. The desserts are quilted blankets of salt and sugar, composed of creamy and crunchy. And in the same vein, the simple complexity of Milk Bar is its own gastronomic feat.

I have a sweet tooth. I love to indulge in sugar. It is something that I have always felt, in a way, encouraged to eat: Candy appears all over girls’ clothing, backpacks and other merchandise. Images of cupcakes and cakes are often pink and covered in delicate toppings, a hallmark expression of femininity.

People have always linked me (and other women) to sweet-themed nicknames: honey, sugar, sweetie, sweetheart.

The L.A. store offers a similar menu to that of its New York siblings: Centerpiece items are the cereal milk soft serve, crack pie, compost cookie and naked cake. The names themselves are a nod to the playfulness that shines through everything Tosi creates.

And, like its other locations, the Milk Bar in Los Angeles comes fitted with several photogenic backdrops: A succulent wall decorates the exterior, and the neon pink “Milk” sign attracts cell phone cameras like moths to a flame. Scroll through any Milk Bar hashtag, website or Yelp page, and there will be many an outstretched hand gesturing a cup of cornflake-dusted soft serve toward the sign.

I have a sweet tooth. In a way, my sweet tooth felt ordained by the world I was living in. There was no shame in my sweet tooth — unlike men who have a passion for dessert, I don’t sacrifice any masculinity in enjoying it.

The sweets themselves all feel carefully composed, balancing decadence and dairy product with precision. The cereal milk soft serve maintains an element of saltiness from the toasted cornflakes, rich with the taste of whole milk — a near-perfect replica of the real thing, only better. The crack pie is dense with a thick mixture of butter and sugar, the refreshing crunch of the corn cookie crust breaking the overwhelming richness of the dish. The portion is quite small for its price, but it is still plenty. The compost cookie, as well as the other cookies sold at Milk Bar, are large and crammed with filling, allowing each new bite to break the monotony of the last one.

There are a slew of other baked goods purveyed at the Milk Bar store, including milkshakes and truffles, but perhaps its most recognizable dessert is the naked cake: three layers of moist cake, with flavorings and frosting in-between, but nothing to decorate its exterior. The cake stands unfrosted, showing off its delicate layering and infallible moistness. They are good cakes, celebrity-inducing cakes, celebrity-endorsed cakes (Jay-Z and Beyoncé are rumored to have raved about it during Taylor Swift’s 25th birthday party). And within the world of foodies, Tosi is a true celebrity.

But Christina Tosi is a shining and near-solitary female celebrity chef in an ocean of male celebrity chefs.

I have a sweet tooth. I have a passion for dessert. And if I wanted to pursue that passion, I’m lucky — pastry is one of the only careers in food that champions women. Even without that passion, superiors in the kitchen will often place women in some pastry position, because they assume women will naturally enjoy it.

It’s no shock when I say that the restaurant industry is sexist. Despite the sweeping social movements encouraging women to gain more power in the workplace, it seems that the culinary world is still stuck in the 1950s. In culinary school, women face the realization that it will be much more difficult for them to succeed than their male counterparts. In the kitchen, many women are subjected to both harassment and abuse, physical and verbal, with little consequence. And, as head chefs, people often scrutinize their leadership and authority. Ripples of workplace sexism in other careers are waves of misogyny in the world of food.

For many inspired female chefs, baking is one of the only ways to succeed in the workplace. Pastry chefs are given a fair amount of control and can create visually and gastronomically stunning delights. In some cases like Tosi’s, pastry can lead to a prosperous baking career. For others, it can be a spectacular jumpstart for their own restaurants.

Pastry is, more or less, a female-dominated culinary world. So why, then, did Netflix’s “Chef’s Table” only feature one woman in its season dedicated to pastry?

I have a sweet tooth. I am a woman. Long ago, somewhere deep in human history, the link between sugar and femininity was formed, and it still hasn’t broken. Maybe it’s some exercise in willpower: Men are expected to resist sweets, while women are expected to enjoy them. Or maybe it is strictly because meat is seen as masculine and sugar is seen as the opposite.

There’s still hope for the culinary world. More and more women are opening their own high-end bakeries and restaurants. More women are excelling in the limelight, bolstered by a climate that’s beginning to show signs of support. More women are winning awards; the 2018 James Beard Awards recognized a diverse and large number of women in food, a refreshing first. There is still plenty of room for the food industry to grow and welcome more brilliant women, and hopefully it will.

Tosi’s Milk Bar empire stands not only as a great place for ice cream and cookies, but as a beacon of hope for aspiring women in food everywhere. Creativity, ingenuity and hard work resulted in a multi-store expansion, and a national reputation.

Christina Tosi has a sweet tooth. I have a sweet tooth. It might have something to do with my gender, but I think I just love sweets.

Christina Tiber is a junior majoring in psychology. Her column, “Eating L.A. Before It Eats Itself,” runs every other Thursday.