Christina Tosi and her dessert empire: the story of the pastry chef who chose to take an ambitious path, leaving restaurants for her own business.
The story
Christina Tosi's “sweet fortune”- according to Celebrity Net Worth-is worth as much as $1 million. It is well known, fortune blesses the daring, and certainly, daring Christina is. Born in Berea, Ohio, she moved to Springfield, Virginia, when her parents divorced. Driven by an innate drive and a somewhat rare perseverance, she majored in applied mathematics and Italian at James Madison University. Spirit of sacrifice and determination have always been hallmarks of Christina, but equally ingrained in her DNA is a love of sweets. Growing up with two baking-loving grandmothers and an equally gluttonous mother and aunt, as early as high school she worked in a bakery in New Hampshire during the summers, and in college she became a line cook and waitress in her spare time. Once she graduated, she flew to Florence with the idea of pursuing a career as a translator, but soon sweets brought her back overseas to further her studies in pastry at the French Culinary Institute.
Again, the aspiring pastry chef Tosi does not just study, but works six days a week to make the most of every opportunity that comes her way. She began, then, working at the French restaurant Bouley to continue, then, with numerous other experiences, extremely different from each other, but always related to gastronomy. “I used to help friends who were food stylists and restaurateurs. For a while, I worked one day a week as an editorial assistant at Saveur. I never took time off, I was so excited to try everything and wanted to be the best employee, but towards my family I was terrible. I missed all the parties, birthdays and weddings at home, “ she told the New York Times. Then came the time to work alongside as pastry chef Wylie Dufresne, for Christina her great mentor, however, she soon realized that fine dining did not belong to her all that much: “I liked the challenge of working under a pastry chef, but I struggled. Some aspects of my character don't mesh with that kind of dessert, those creations are extraordinary, it's just not a type of pastry for me.".
The real turning point comes when she meets David Chang, owner of the Momofuku restaurant chain, her true patron. Chang discovered Christina's talent “almost by accident”. At the time, in fact, Tosi was in an office role and often offered the team cookies and snacks in the morning, which she prepared the night before. So delicious were her creations that Chang asked her to make a dessert for his Ssam bar so that she could later curate the dessert proposal for the entire Momofuku group. "She is a born leader...Christina has an insatiable desire to learn. She just does.... There are very few people who have the freedom to do what they want in the company. She does. I trust her completely,", Chang confided to The Guardian. It was Chang again who prompted her to open her first Milk Bar in 2008. Since then, the rise has been fast and relentless, and soon Tosi became the flesh-and-blood emblem of creative pastry, where every creation is a true comfort food. Her marathon runner's spirit, because, yes, Christina is that too, does not allow her to stop, so today in addition to running no less than ten Milk Bars in the United States, working with other successful brands she is, also, the author of five books. “My brain is constantly in motion. Creativity is my fiercest fuel...,” she writes to introduce herself.
