Christina Tosi
🇺🇸 United States · American cuisine · b. 1981
The Milk Bar founder who turned American snack-aisle nostalgia into a global pastry empire.
Biography
Christina Tosi is an American pastry chef and the founder of Milk Bar, the bakery and dessert brand born inside David Chang's Momofuku group in 2008 and now an independent national chain. Born in Ohio and raised in Virginia, she studied mathematics at the University of Virginia and the James Beard-credentialed French Culinary Institute in New York before working as the in-house pastry person for Momofuku Ssäm Bar. Faced with the problem of running a pastry programme inside what was then a hipster Korean-American restaurant, she invented a category of dessert — Compost Cookies, Crack Pie (later renamed Milk Bar Pie), Cereal Milk soft-serve — built explicitly on the textures and flavours of American snack-aisle childhood.
Milk Bar opened as its own storefront in 2008 in New York's East Village and now has locations across the United States plus a national e-commerce business. Tosi has won two James Beard Foundation awards: Rising Star Chef of the Year (2012) and Outstanding Baker (2015, 2017). She has been a judge on MasterChef and MasterChef Junior since 2014 and is the host of the Netflix series 'Bake Squad'.
Her cooking is unapologetically anti-haute: birthday-cake truffles, cornflake-marshmallow-chocolate-chip cookies, and the milk-soaked-cereal soft-serve are all designed around taste memories that most American adults share. She is widely credited with creating the modern category of nostalgia-driven luxury pastry, an idea that has since spread to chefs across the world.
Cooking Philosophy
Treat childhood snacks with the seriousness reserved for haute pâtisserie. Tosi argues that flavours like cereal milk, birthday cake, and the brown crumbs at the bottom of a chip bag are as worthy of careful technique as crème pâtissière or Valrhona ganache — and that pastry has spent too long apologising for sweetness. The Compost Cookie, which contains pretzels, potato chips, coffee grounds, oats, butterscotch and chocolate, is the textbook example.
Restaurants
- Milk BarNew York / Los Angeles / Boston / Washington DC / Las Vegas
Tosi's bakery chain across the US.
- Bang BangNew York
A 2023 brunch/baking concept.
Awards & Recognition
- James Beard Foundation — Rising Star Chef of the Year (2012)
- James Beard Foundation — Outstanding Baker (2015, 2017)
- Food & Wine Best New Chef (2009)
- Two-time New York Times Cookbook of the Year shortlist
Iconic Dishes
Cookbooks
- Momofuku Milk Bar (2011)
- Milk Bar Life (2015)
- Milk Bar: All About Cake (2018)
- All About Cookies (2022)
Recipes in Christina's Style
These recipes from our database reflect the american cooking tradition that Christina works in. They are not direct reproductions of Christina's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
In Christina's Own Words
“Childhood is one of the most underrated pantries in pastry.”
“If you cannot get someone to smile, you have not finished the recipe yet.”
“Cereal milk is a real flavour. Treat it that way.”
Career Timeline
Graduates from the French Culinary Institute, New York.
Joins Wylie Dufresne's wd~50 as pastry assistant.
Joins Momofuku Ssäm Bar as Momofuku's first in-house pastry chef.
Opens the first Milk Bar storefront in New York's East Village.
Wins James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef of the Year.
Joins MasterChef and MasterChef Junior as judge.
Milk Bar spins out of Momofuku as an independent company; Tosi becomes CEO.
Mentors & Influences
Frequently Asked Questions about Christina Tosi
What is Milk Bar?
Milk Bar is a U.S. bakery chain founded by Christina Tosi in 2008 inside David Chang's Momofuku group. It became a standalone company in 2020 and now operates across the U.S. plus a national e-commerce business.
Why was Crack Pie renamed?
In 2019 Milk Bar renamed its bestselling 'Crack Pie' to 'Milk Bar Pie' after years of criticism that the original name made light of the crack epidemic and its disproportionate effect on Black American communities. Tosi acknowledged the criticism and made the change publicly.
What is the Compost Cookie?
The Compost Cookie is Tosi's signature dessert: a cookie containing pretzels, potato chips, coffee grounds, oats, butterscotch chips and chocolate chips. It is the textbook example of her philosophy of treating snack-aisle textures as legitimate pastry building blocks.
Did Christina Tosi train under David Chang?
She joined Momofuku Ssäm Bar in 2006 as Chang's first in-house pastry chef; the two were business partners for over a decade. Milk Bar separated from Momofuku as an independent company in 2020.
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