567: New York’s Buzziest Bakery with Shilpa & Miro Uskokovic

27:34I started writing one-off recipes. My very first recipe, I actually got commissioned two recipes at the same time. Both of them fish recipes. Both of them very popular. Oh, very popular. Very popular. I see where this story is going. So people are loving what you're doing. I mean, it was, listen, yes, people love those two recipes. I'm not even going to be coy about it. People love those two recipes. Sarah commissioned me for a miso butterfish with asparagus. And then Andy, who was also there at the time, those were his last few months, commissioned coconut mustard fish, which was a recipe that I developed based on like a Bengali style preparation of fish.

28:16And both of those did really well and was very shocking to me. And it was very, after years of cooking, to then be able to take your experience and put it on a platform that many people then cook from, to see this kind of reception to what you do every day was just mind -blowing to me. I was like, what? Yeah, I mean, you were working professionally 12, 14, 16 hours a day. You said you were a little depressed. You know, you're working this job that you're not like checking the gram to see what's in the pages of BA. You're in your own world because you have to be just for survival. So then to be, you know, commission these recipes to have them succeed.

28:58It's like, hello. Yeah. Food media welcomes you. Want to join our party? You know, kind of vibe. Yeah. I was very lucky that those, you know, in all fairness, credit to both Andy and Sarah for looking at my pitches. and knowing that these would work for an audience. So, you know, major credit to them for knowing that. And that's how I got my foot in the door in many ways. And I started off developing a couple of recipes. And then I saw that there was like an ad, like, you know, for a job. Like a LinkedIn ad for a job, yeah. For, there was an open position. That's the professional word. Yeah, sure.

29:37Open position. There was an open position for an editor role at BA. And then I was like, and I just, you know, I just started contributing recipes as well. I reached out to Sarah being like, hey, Sarah, I see this position. Do you think I should apply? And she was like, absolutely, yes. And she was very kind. She gave me the email for Chris and Meryl. And I emailed them. And that's how I started. You know, I remember at the time I was in India. It was 2021. It was the COVID. Delta variant was raging. We were all in lockdown. We were stuck in India. I mean, we had gone there to visit my parents, Miro and I, and we were supposed to come back within four weeks, but we were stuck there for like eight weeks.

30:16So I remember being in India and like interviewing with Chris over Zoom and Meryl as well. And then I started freelancing with, you know, like full-time freelancing in a way with Bon Appetit for like a few months. And then I started full-time. And you got the job. Yeah, and then I got the job. So talk about those early years at BA, you know, working in the test kitchen, putting out the magazine, the website recipes. And then, of course, your, you know, your appearance on camera. I mean, you're from the bio you just told us about. It seems like you probably weren't doing a lot of camera work. And, you know, long history of camera at BA.

30:56You know, there's some make it, some don't. Some thrive, some don't. And you clearly are so natural at it. What was that like, like stepping up to the camera, start talking about your recipes on camera? And then also two-part question, just like working in the test kitchen and developing the recipes with the cadence that I know is aggressive.

31:18Being on camera was very, very new. I think maybe I need to say that I actually hate taking even pictures of myself. Like if I look through my camera roll, maybe now I've started to take like selfies of myself to check my makeup. But before that, I hated being photographed. I always have been very conscious of my appearance. So to be on camera was a lot. And I don't know that I'm still, thank you for saying that, you know, I come across reasonably well on camera. To some extent, I still don't feel very comfortable on camera because being on video, you're captured. It's like a moment in time. It's captured.

31:59And then, of course, you have to be, you know, edit. And sometimes nuance can be lost in a video. But it was something that I got comfortable doing and I've learned to do whenever I'm asked to do it. I'm going to ask the corniest question, but you're going to answer that because I think it says a lot is, you know, what makes a showbook recipe work? Like, what makes it iconic? What makes it you? I think my recipes are very thoughtful because, I mean, I take a lot of pride in my knowledge and ability as a cook. I feel like I'm extremely knowledgeable about food and cooking. So I use that to try to make a thoughtful recipe that is effective but doesn't ask a lot of the reader.

32:49And if I ask a reader to, let's say, deep fry something, I want it to be worth their time. So I like to think of my recipes as being thoughtful. I think they're also very flavor heavy. I don't shy away from the flavor. I don't shy away from like the gochujang and the misos and the chili crisps. I love big, bold, brash, in-your-face flavor. 40 cloves of garlic and chickpeas, for example. Yes. Love that. This recipe was actually in collaboration with Emile Stanek. I love working with Emile. And his premise, his pitch was, you know, the best way to meal prep is to have a dinner party on Sunday. And then you can keep the leftovers for the rest of the week.

33:31And so in going back and forth, we decided like we both love like stewed braised chickpeas. And I developed this recipe for chickpeas with 40 cloves of garlic. You have to count them out. I counted them out in the recipe, so you do as well. And it's just a very simple recipe. Emil and I disagreed on this point. He wanted dry chickpeas. And I was like, Emil, nobody's going to start with dry chickpeas again. You are correct in that assumption. I speak for most people. Yeah. So I started with canned chickpeas and I put them, you know, in a pot with some chicken stock and 40 cloves of garlic that I sear first in a little bit of oil.

34:08And then by the time it's done simmering, the chickpeas just take on this like otherworldly quality. Like you don't think this is from a can anymore. They become really buttery and soft. They really absorb all of that olive oil and the garlic. It's just such a joy to eat. And I often make it for myself and I eat it over like toast. Oh, yeah. I love your toast moves. You got mushrooms on toast tomorrow for lunch. I love bread. And then you got this chickpeas on toast. It's great. I mean, especially if you live in a neighborhood that has a great bakery. Or you bake your own bread. I don't want to, like, say you bake your own bread.

34:41What a great way to use your own baked bread. Yeah. Speaking of baking, you host Bake Club at BA with Jessie. I love it. It's full of ideas. Talk about that program. Bake Club was something that I thought of almost two years ago. You know, every year we have to like goal setting exercise. Yes. What's your goal for the next year? I was like, bake club. You know, I was very much inspired by Christina Tosi's bake club, cake picnic. All of these like spaces where people were coming together, either in real life or virtually, over this common interest of baking. And I was always fascinated by that.

35:23And I was very inspired by that. And I decided that at Bon Appetit, we have a great platform to engage our readers in this way. So I decided we should have something called BA Bake Club where we would come up with a recipe and we would build a community around that. And it went nowhere for a little while, to be very frank. And then Jesse started a year or so after I was there at BA. And then slowly, you know, he was also he's also an excellent baker. So together we sort of plotted it a bit more and then we spoke to a few editors and Emma, our associate director of cooking, she was very into it as well.

36:03So she really supported our idea. And one thing led to the other. We really worked as a team and we built up Bake Club, which now I have to say is a community of over 200 people, maybe 400. We'll fact check that. Yeah. But and essentially it has multiple components. And the theme of Bake Club is Jesse and I develop a new recipe every month and we publish it online. And as a subscriber, you have access to the recipe, of course. And then you also have access to us via Instagram close friends. So then we have this little group of people on Instagram. That is so clever. It's so fun. And Matt, I have to tell you, this is the most wholesome chat I've ever seen.

36:46Like everybody's like, oh, I made this cake and it turned out amazing. And everybody's like swapping tips on how to bake. It's just nice that people share pictures of the things they bake. They ask us questions. And I think this is the part of Bake Club that I was really wanting for many years is Jesse and I are able to respond in real time to those questions. And then we tell them, hey, this is what I did. Wait, you're responding in real time? Yeah, we respond. That's really, really cool. Yeah. Sometimes we see the message coming and we respond right away. That's the way to do it. It's great.

37:18And people love that. People love to get intel from us who've developed those recipes. And also we learn a lot. And Jesse had developed this recipe for a chocolate olive oil cake. And many people missed the inclusion of water in that recipe. And we got so many complaints or notes from our subscribers who were in that close friends group that we had to go back and change where in the recipe water appeared and how it appeared. And in a way, we changed the formatting of our recipes just because we got such good feedback. Same thing with like a past cheesecake that I developed. A lot of people had trouble with like mascarpone whipped topping that was on the cake.

37:58And then I had to go back and change the recipe. So it's been invaluable for us as recipe developers to have this kind of direct interaction with our readers. And it's so gratifying. That's real talk. I like that. That's how a community works. And, you know, not everybody's kitchen setup is the same. There's going to be variables happening. So to do pastry and baking recipes, there's always going to be a little bit of an inconsistency. And so for everyone to share that and help you write the perfect recipe. Yes. It's really fun. I'm going to link to Bake Club in the show notes. Check it out. Very cool.

38:30Thank you. Hi there, it's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on Three Things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey, link in our show notes. Today's episode is brought to you by ButcherBox.

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40:28Visit butcherbox.com slash taste to get this limited time offer and free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. On This Is Taste, we discuss about the discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire fast and furious taste check. Are you ready? Wait, wait. Wait, I'm actually not. The best fruit? Mango, but only if it's Indian or Thai. Where do you find them in New York, then? Thai mangoes are a little bit easier to find. Indian mangoes, I have to get them shipped in. There is a farm called Savani Farms, and I get Indian mangoes through them.

41:06I love that. The worst vegetable? Carrots. Wow. So fast you said that. So fast. I don't have to think twice. The sugar content, the having to peel them, the why? What is a carrot doing? What is it doing? It's woody. It's silly. It's not really doing anything. Not even slow braised with like a cheese and a nut? I mean, maybe, but I've seen that too many times. Pickled, I can take pickled carrots. Pickled carrots, yeah. But we saved carrots a bit there, but you make a strong case. They're woody. No one wants to eat anything woody. They're woody. When you roast them, they often end up dry. So you have to kind of steam them or boil them first and then roast them at a high heat.

41:50This is too much work. Great. So you'll go like maybe like five, six minutes, boil, pull out, take the moisture off and then put them in the roast, high heat, 450, oil. That's usually how I do it. Boil them in heavily salted water. Heavy salt, right. Then pull it out and then roast hard because then I think it creates a tender inside and it gets some nice char on the outside. Right. You don't overcook it then. That's smart. What is your typical breakfast? So Monday through Thursday, that's when we go into the office. it's usually like cereal or avocado toast or cream of wheat. And then the rest of the days, it's something fun.

42:26Like eggs. I love eggs, but it is not the season for eggs. I love eggs or dosas, pancakes. And when I have a little bit more time, but I love breakfast. I love breakfast. Oh my gosh, the eggs in running a bakery. Oh my gosh. I have a video of our egg guy coming in and I was like, everybody make way. He's the most important person of the day. Truly. Wow. What a complicated story. We joke about it, but it's complicated, right? It's a deeper issue. It's tough. The best dessert. Big one. The strawberry passion fruit tart at Honey's Bakery. Okay. Nepotism, but okay. No, you're proud of it. Passion fruit.

43:10I think about John George. What an innovator with passion fruit. Passion fruit and chocolate. Yeah. That was at Spice Market. Yeah. Pichet Anam was the chef back in 1999, 2000. Yeah. Spice Market was a great restaurant. That was a groundbreaking restaurant. Yeah, Pichet is great. Very talented. Very talented. You know, actually, that's a good point that you bring up because I'm pretty sure Miro and Daniel, who's our head baker at Honey's, they both have a combination of strawberry and passion fruit for the first time at John George. I love that combination. What's your go-to fast food stop? Shake Shack.

43:41Does that count? Very much so. It's a great answer. Shake Shack. You said that very, like, are you just not a fast food person? Yeah, I don't really eat. Not because I'm trying to be, like, holier than thou about fast food. I just, I don't think I have many opportunities to eat it. So Shake Shack, I think. Favorite city in the world to visit for food? I think this is a bit of a cop-out, so forgive me, but it's going to have to be New York City. Wow. You know, it's not a cop-out. I mean, it's an original idea, and most New York-based people do not say that. Oh, I think New York. Like, it's a great city.

44:15Like, I've traveled, you know, a decent number of places across the world. But I think what's unique about New York is, first of all, you have access to so many different cuisines, you know, in one location, which is rare to find in other parts of the world. And I also think in America in general, we have access to really good quality ingredients. So, to me, food tastes typically better here. So, I love the adventurous spirit of New York. Great answer. I think I probably would answer that myself. Do you have a favorite bread? Okay, my answer is yes, I have two, and they're at the opposite end of the spectrum.

44:51One is like shitty sliced potato bread. I love it. Like Martin's? Like Martin's. Oh, the slice. We love the buns for burgers, but the slices. The slice. And that peculiar smell that it makes in the toaster. Somewhat weird and concerning, but also very nostalgic and comforting at the same. comforting at the same time. So it's either like a Martin's potato loaf or it's something very dark and heavy, like a seeded rye. Yeah. A sturdy bread. Yeah. Milled that day. Yes. One of those. Yay. I like the contrast. Your favorite cookbook of all time. A book that I really enjoyed is Baked to Perfection by Katerina, and forgive me, I might be getting the last name wrong, Sir Melch.

45:39I think excellent book. It's actually a gluten-free book. Not gluten-free by any means, but the way she's explained things in that book, there's illustrations, there's so much detail. Great, great baking book. That and I think Sift by Nicola Lamb. Unbelievable book. Last one, your favorite sandwich. Oh, I think the pastrami egg and cheese from Frankel's. Oh, yeah, Frankel's. Love that shout out. It makes it so good. I think the American cheese in it. And then we always, we live in Sunnyside and then Frankl's is in Greenpoint. We always get it delivered. And it's still somehow through that 20-minute or 30-minute ride, it still stays gooey inside.

46:21And then the pastrami is in nice hunks. It's not like thinly sliced. So that contrast. And of course, it has like a squishy roll, probably a Martin's. And it's the squishy bread, these big chunks of seasoned pastrami, this gooey cheese. It really works well, especially when you douse it with a bit of like a crystal hot sauce. Crystal. That's the one. Not Frank's. Yeah, I love crystal. It's my favorite brand, too. My daddy used to love that one. Shilpa, this has been so much fun. Will you come back? If you'll have me, absolutely. Love to have you back. Thank you so much for joining us this day.

46:53Oh, thank you for having me.

46:59Miro Uskokovic, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. I have to say just right off the jump that Honey's Bakery is like, I can't stop thinking about the things that I've tried there. I think it's such a special place and I'm so excited to chat with you about it. Thank you very much for saying that. And I'm happy to be here and chat with you as well. Yeah, in our dark podcast studio together. So we're going to talk today about like your pastry background and the work that you're doing at Honey's and all of that. But to start, I just want to get a little bit of insight into like who you are as a person and your background in food.

47:32And I'm wondering if you have any food memories from growing up that you think were kind of impactful or like shaped your view towards food. Oh, I had so many great food memories growing up. I mean, I grew up in like a large Monteregian family in north of Serbia. My father had many siblings, my mother as well. They would just live walking distance. And our home was like a paternal home where our grandparents lived as well. So everybody would come on a daily basis. So there was always food, a lot of great food. And my mother cooked. And yeah, like since I can remember, I was always surrounded by food.

48:05My mother was a great cheesemaker as well. We grew up on a farm. We had many cows and other animals. And we had a great amount of milk that my mother would make cheese and yogurt and buttermilk. And at one point, we had so much that she would even start selling it. So yeah, she was a great cook, great baker. So I was always surrounded by great food. You do seem like you have good calcium and like good bones. definitely we had to eat a lot of cheese a lot of dairy a lot of milk and a yogurt on a daily basis we wouldn't go to bed without drinking a glass of yogurt so really yes and it was like drinkable yogurt kind of like kefir i would say not not yogurt like have you had like american go-gurt before in the tubes maybe there's nowhere nowhere as good as that i mean it's a similar texture as it's usually american yogurts are a little bit on the sweeter side because they're flavored, but we would always drink them plain.

48:56I'm curious, like for birthdays growing up, did you have a birthday cake? Like what was the celebration kind of food? Yeah, not one cake. I always had at least three to four cakes. My mother was a great baker and she would always go out of her way for, you know, I was the youngest. I would say her favorite, but she loved all her kids equally. And she would always go out of her way to make a wonderful spread of food for our birthdays. I mean, I remember once, maybe I was seven or eight, she did like, she made like a, I asked her to make a cake in a shape. I was, you know, I loved animals as a kid.

49:27So I asked her to make a bear cake. So she made a bear cake. She also made a butterfly cake. She made an owl cake. Like, you know, she was working for like a two days making, and she loved the shapes. And besides that, she also did like these little like kind of like breads in the shape of little piggies with like a ketchup and like ham and such. And yeah, she always really would go out and she would take a pride because, you know, we had so much large family and we would always have at least 40, 50 people show up. So it was kind of like a thrill for her as well to make all this wonderful food and share it with our family.

50:05Wow, that's like the most dreamy, incredible childhood I've ever heard of on this show. Do you remember? I mean, look, let's put it this way. I grew up in a former Yugoslavia. and, you know, when I was six years old is when the breakup of Yugoslavia started, which resulted in multiple wars and conflicts that lasted. You know, Great Depression, it was literally the economic collapse was like the size of the Great Depression in the 30s. But I grew up on a farm and we were very fortunate enough because my parents worked really, really hard growing our food and having, you know, homemade milk and cheese and homegrown vegetables.

50:40And they really went out of their way to make sure that whatever was happening outside of the home, that children weren't affected by that. I think that they definitely went through some difficulties and challenges, maybe not as much as some other people living in former Yugoslavia who actually seen war and fighting and bombs. Fortunately, where I come from, we really didn't see much of that, aside from the 99 bombing of Serbia. But despite all of the situation that was happening, you know those dark times like I've grew up fairly sheltered from all of that and my family really went out of their way to make my life as as pleasant as possible and you know I was only six years old when all of that started so I really don't remember any other time before that maybe my sister does who was 10 years older than me so I really didn't have anything more pleasant to compare it to.

51:37So I always felt my life was good and happy. Yeah, I really appreciate you giving that context. And I think when I was talking about it being dreamy, I didn't mean to say that it all was easy, but, you know, actually it was rooted in a reality of, you know, being in this family and in this home where you were able to have those things. Yes. We had all that we needed. You know, we had food, we had a roof overhead, we were like really happy. There was always kids to play around with. So it was a good childhood. And, you know, I had a bear birthday cake, no matter what was happening. Like we had a cake.

52:09We had a dessert on our table to make us make our lives just a little more sweeter. So I guess you always had this appetite for desserts, but I'm interested when you decided that that was kind of something you wanted to spend your life doing. I mean, I think it was a road, long road to getting to that point. I mean, like every parent, they wish for their child to be, you know, a doctor, engineer, just to be better than what they did in their life. You know, cooking and being a chef was not necessarily something that was considered glamorous at the time. I mean, even chefs, he was just a cook at the time, right?

52:42Like nobody really thought of, not even in America, I would say, in like late 90s and 2000s. I think only with like emergence of like Jamie Oliver and all of these good celebrities did people kind of started shifting their opinion about this profession. But, you know, I was kind of guided in a way like every child is, not pushed, but kind of guided to do something more and be bigger. I've attended both law school and hospitality for tourism and management, kind of focused on travel when I've started college. But I always loved food. I loved eating. I loved making food. They never really stopped me and told me not to experiment with it.

53:23And eventually at one point I realized, OK, like I really love this and I want to pursue a career in, you know, food, in chef. Like, you know, I think maybe Jamie Oliver was also like that, like a deal that you see as like, you know, 16 year old boy, like watching this like young guy, young chef, like making it look cool and fun. And I just decided to go for it. And you decided to come to America for culinary school. So I actually came to America first in high school. So I came here as a foreign exchange student in the great state of Indiana to finish high school. And then I went back home to attend college.

54:02And I wanted to come back to the United States to continue my studies. But that's when, unfortunately, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. So I decided to stay there until she passed away. And then I moved and came to the United States for college, came back. And when you went to Indiana for the first time, your first impressions of America, I imagine the food was probably pretty different in some ways. In some ways, in all of the ways. As I mentioned earlier, I grew up in communist and socialist countries. So all of the food that we consumed was either what you made and what you could find in a store at the time.

54:43There was not that much. The stores were tiny, government-run, a lot of times empty shelves like bread lines, milk lines. So you do come to Indiana, to America as a 60-year-old kid, and, you know, Walmart felt like an amusement park, literally. Like, you know, you go there to buy yogurt. It takes you 25 minutes to decide which yogurt to buy because there were so, so, so many choices. Yeah, and then you can buy, like, a gun on your way out also. That's true. Indiana, you could. I don't know now, but back then you could. Like, I mean, everything. You could buy anything, which I found, like, it was so fascinating to me.

55:15Like, the Walmart was literally larger than my, like, the block that I lived on. And it was really fascinating to see all this food, the abundance of food. Like, you know, we saw it in the movies, right? Like we heard about it. But like until you see it in person, you're like, wow, this is crazy and amazing at the same time. Do you remember any foods that you tried like your first time in the U.S. or maybe even coming back that were kind of so different or maybe like exciting to you? I mean, everything. Like, I mean, the amount of protein that people ate here was just remarkable to me. Like, you know, we would get like one chicken for like seven people.

55:49Like here you get like half a chicken per person in Indiana. Like burgers were like a quarter pound, right? Everything was so big. Everything was massive. Like people ate a lot more protein, a lot more starches, less vegetables, a lot more fat, like a lot more dessert. Like fast food was everywhere. Like before then I maybe had McDonald's once and that was the only fast food I ever experienced. And now like you have Taco Bell, you have Dairy Queen, you have Burger King, like so many options. And as again, as a teenage boy, like you just want to try all of these things. Like I remember I was so obsessed with McDonald's breakfast, which we did not have back home in Serbia, as well as with Taco Bell.

56:25I just thought Taco Bell was like the coolest thing ever. Like, I mean, I never experienced any other food aside from like regional food. So, you know, to me, like Taco Bell was like foreign Mexican food, though it's not. But to me, that was like, oh, wow, this is so amazing and cool and like spicy and interesting and intriguing. Yeah, I'm picturing all these receptors in your brain lighting up from eating that much MSG, processed food, sugar, salt at the same time. Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think I gained like 20 pounds in the first four months. You're like freshman 15. But I loved it. I felt like I was let loose to enjoy all this food, and I definitely did.

57:04It's very interesting to me because I think that your bakery, Honeys, that you do with Shilpa, it really feels like it's rooted in this kind of like Americana nostalgia. But neither of you actually like grew up here. No, neither one of us grew up here. I was, as I said, 16 when I arrived. Shilpa was, I believe, in 21, 22. But I think both of us were really fascinated and fell in love with American food very quickly. And as you said, like we maybe didn't grow up with it, but like we were like really immersed in it and really fell for it. And, you know, we decided when we have our own business, we would love it to be like an aunt to that experience or a lived experience, not just where we come from, but also where we came to and things that we've learned along the way.

57:51And yeah, like even my career, right? Like I spent the last 10 years working in Gramercy Tavern, which is, you know, quintessential American restaurant. So it felt like a natural transition. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about your pastry background because you were at Gramercy Tavern for so long. You were also, you know, at Jean-Georges, all of these other really iconic places. Like, how do you feel like doing this more like fine dining, like upper echelon of restaurants kind of shaped your view on pastry and the kind of food that you want to do? Oh, it definitely shaped, you know, when I actually just had a meeting with our head baker, Daniel Alvarez, who I want to give a shout out.

58:25He's amazing and he's great. and he actually worked, this is the third time that we're working together. We started as Jean Roche like 15 years ago, and then he was my sous chef at Gramercy Tavern and now at Honey's. And before that, he also worked at Daily Provision and, you know, Square Cafe. So we both have a big background as a pastry chef, not just as a baker's as well. So we were just having a discussion. It was like, you know, our desserts feel very like pastry chef-y rather than baking. Like there's too many. I was telling him, there's a lot of components. A lot of gardeners, it was like maybe we need to like start thinking in more like a baker's and kind of have a little bit more like simpler things.

59:04So definitely has shaped like, you know, I love using a lot of fruits. I love using, you know, herbs, teas, flowers, you know, spices. And, you know, that's what we have been leaning in and honeys. And, you know, now we are approaching spring and summer and I'm really, really excited. But again, I think we should continue to lean into that and think as a pastry chef, but also kind of... go back and be like, okay, let's simplify some things as well to give a variety of things to people. Why do you think you need to simplify, like from the production point of view or just because it's doing a lot?

59:42From both, I would say from everything. Like, you know, I think you just need to have a variety of things. And especially today with the rising food costs, like obviously, like if you are complicating things and adding a lot of garnishes, it also adds to the final price tag. So sometimes it's also good to have certain, you know, and I find myself sometimes looking in the menu, I was like, okay, everything is a little bit on a higher end. And understandably so, considering how much work goes into it and ingredients. But it was like, OK, let's think about something a little more simpler that, you know, we can also charge a little less.

1:00:13So that way we, you know, there's not like a huge sticker shock that happens to our guests. So, like, you know, you just have to always think about everything like and everyone like, you know, it's that's how we approach it. Yeah, I think it's interesting to think about like what use the neighborhood bakery has for customers as opposed to like the fine dining restaurant that is more of like a special occasion for most people. Yes. Not everybody wants to have like, you know, this like beautiful croissant charred with passion fruit curd and Harry's Berry strawberries like a lot of people do. But some people just want to come in and have just like a morning bun, you know, and something just like simple that it's not too intellectual.

1:00:50Yeah. When you guys were, you know, launching Honeys and doing press, something that I read that I thought was interesting was that, you know, there's like a lot of croissants in the city right now and that you wanted to make a bakery for the cookie, like cake contingent of people. Yes. Where did that idea kind of come from? Well, it's American, right? So we always knew that we wanted to be like an American style bakery. And though I think the croissants today, like in the last 10 years, have become such a quintessential part of American food and scene, especially bakeries. But again, like with the rise, as you said, of the croissant, we have a lot of these amazing, amazing bakeries are kind of focusing on croissants that we felt that there weren't as many who are focusing on cakes.

1:01:28There are definitely some amazing ones, but we felt like there was an opening to maybe explore cakes and cookies and just kind of give people an opportunity that if they want to come, you know, if they get out of work at 3 or 4 p.m., they can always come to our space and they will have a slice of honey cake or Brooklyn Blackout or they'll have like a pudding in a cup, you know, a sweet treat, you know, after a long day of work that they can grab their coffee. because, you know, I felt like croissant to me is always more appropriate in the morning hours and maybe like in early afternoon hours. But I personally would never have a croissant at like 3 or 4 p.m.

1:02:09That's the time that I want to have a cake or a cookie. And, you know, we really wanted to make sure that when we are, that our hours of operations are 8 to 5, we might be changing them slightly, but it's going to be around the time we wanted to make sure that we do have something in our case. all day long and things do change. Because as much as I appreciate people who are early risers and who's going to come and wait in line for an hour, I also want to make sure that we don't alienate people who, you know, maybe work there, not able to come in in the morning. They can only come in the afternoon, again, for like a cookie.

1:02:44So we want to make sure that we have something available for them as well. Yeah, I think when I've been in the bakery, I've been so kind of overwhelmed and impressed with the level of like activity that's always happening. Like there's so many people in your kitchen. There's so many people behind the counter and you're always bringing things out. And I think, you know, obviously if something is popular, maybe it won't be available. But the fact that you throughout the day, it seems like are continuing to bake things off and replenish the case. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about like the operations of just like how do you make all of this work?

1:03:16It's a lot of people. So there's about 22 people that works at Honey's. We start as early as 430 in the morning. and that's when our bake-off team comes in, meaning they come in the morning to do the final proofing, garnishing, and baking. And that's when we, you know, I just want to clarify, though, we do not have a traditional-shaped croissant and, you know, nothing against it. We just felt like we wanted to, there are so many other things that we wanted to, like highlight on our menu, and there's so many other places, do wonderful traditional croissants, so let them do that. That doesn't mean that we don't have laminated pastries.

1:03:49We do, like, you know, we do make croissant dough, we make a puff pastry, and we make other things out of it that, you know, like our pigs in a blanket. We had a hand pie kind of like a take on burricas. You know, we have now croissant tart, which we call our croissant tart, just so people understand. Sometimes you have to simplify language to explain to people quicker. But it's kind of more like a cross between croissant and the queen amman, and then it comes with like passion fruit and strawberries. So good. So certain things only are in the morning. Things are a little bit more like breakfast-y.

1:04:23Like we have some flatbreads as well that we do, like shakshuka flatbread, like our smoked salmon flatbread. It's kind of on to like New York, everything bagel. But then certain things are coming out later, like 10 o 'clock or 11. We start having more cakes and more like dessert-y options. So 4.30, we have people start coming in. And then we have rest of the team kind of trickling in at different hours, some at 6, some at 8, some come at 12.30. And usually the operations wrap up somewhere around 10, 30 or 11 o 'clock. You know, we are relatively small space. There's only about 800 square feet of the kitchen space that we have.

1:05:04We serve somewhere around 3 ,000 people a week, which is crazy. 800 square feet kitchen space. So we have to have enough of people to make this. We try not to overwork people. Like, they work on average around 45, maybe 50 maximum hours a week. That's why we have a larger team. And we kind of spread everybody's hours so that way they're not into each other's ways. So it's a lot of, like, moving things around. And, like, even now three and a half months in, like, we're still kind of figuring and trying to make it the most efficient. And I think, fortunately, with my background, with Daniel's background, you know, our store manager as well, Rachel Chang, who worked in some great places like Tate Bakery in Boston and like Sergina in Brooklyn, like, you know, with Shilpa as well, who has an extensive experience, and other team members.

1:05:58Like, you know, we are always improving and moving and trying to make this as efficient as possible. And I think we are doing a good job. We are not 100 % there yet. I think I would say we are 75 % there. I don't think so we ever will be 100 % knowing all of us. We are always looking how to make this more efficient and more streamlined. I know everybody's crazy about lines. We have lines on a weekend. I don't know, maybe just a PSD from like my communist time with the bread lines did not mean something good. It usually meant something terrible. It was out of the necessity and depression. So like when I see lines, I'm grateful for people for giving me that opportunity.

1:06:40But I also know how difficult and challenging it is to just stand in line for a croissant. So we really try to move things as quickly as possible. That's why you'll see me or Shilpa on a door on the weekends, like organizing the line, moving the line, kind of like cleaning, picking up, jumping behind the counter, just kind of moving, just moving things as seamless as possible. because to me it is not just providing people the best possible food that you can cook, but it's also every other part of that experience really has to be pleasant for them. And, you know, the last thing we want is for someone to like wait in line for an hour and not get something that they wanted or not have an options.

1:07:27Yeah. Did you ever think you would be a pastry bouncer at your bakery? I actually do enjoy it. At the beginning, it was like weird, but I actually do enjoy it because I get to talk to people. And I see, and, you know, they now, people do kind of know who you are. A lot of people know that that's you. You're the chef and your owner. Or sometimes they'll ask who's the chef owner and I'll say it's me. And you can see how people love that. Like people love to see me or Shilpa at the door, like welcoming them in. It's really like an experience, right? Like they're saying like, oh, wow, like if the chef is able to be at the door and welcome me in.

1:08:01It's already kind of like half a battle won that maybe if they don't get the cinnamon bun, they will not be as upset. Yeah, I hope that no one is giving you a hard time if they can't get something. I feel like when I've been there, everyone is so excited. And it's interesting because you opened when it's been cold in the city. But, you know, as it's getting warmer, like there are much worse things than standing on, like, Second Avenue, right? And like, oh, it's Cooper. It's essentially Third Avenue kind of merging into Cooper Square. There are much worse things than standing on Cooper Avenue, Third Avenue area.

1:08:35That's true. But look, it's like somebody wakes up, comes in the morning, they wait for an hour. Like, you know, it is, you know, you don't know, maybe they had a bad day at work or something's happening at home. So people sometimes will get a little bit upset. I get that. But it is also on us to kind of manage the situation as well and, you know, put ourselves in their position in their shoes. And, you know, things happen, always happen. But, you know, I always tell everyone, myself starting in the front of the house, just always look out to diffuse the situation. Like put yourself into their position, into their feet.

1:09:10Not everybody's just entitled. Some people simply maybe they had a bad day and, you know, they wanted to come and have your cinnamon bun and now they don't have it. So, you know, we have other options that you can offer and entice them to. So but generally those those situations, the cases are just like like maybe I can count them on one hand a week. As I said, we serve nearly like 3000 people and most of them are extremely kind and nice and pleasant. And it's really a joy. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about how you approach like what goes in the pastry case, because I know that sometimes you rotate things out based on the season.

1:09:46I imagine like spring and summer produce is coming in and there are probably like new things that you want to do. So do you think of things as like core offerings or is everything kind of up for fair game to be rotated in and out? I mean, I was hoping that everything would be like a fair game, but I knew that some stuff are going to become like signature things that I don't think so we can really change. We can maybe like tweak and improve on those, probably will. But our three top selling items is triple chocolate chunk cookie. our cinnamon bun, and our carrot cake. And everybody loves that. I think those are going to stay.

1:10:23They're going to go anywhere. You know, maybe we'll, like, try to always improve the dough to make sure that it's more moist and more soft. You know, if we hear complaints from guests, or, like, maybe we'll try to, like, have a different ratio of chocolate as well in our cookie. But generally, like, those things will stay the same. Like, our carrot cake right now is with pineapple jam. Like, say, it's the layers of carrot cake, cream cheese mousse, and pineapple jam. In the fall was pear and cardamom compote. So probably that might change. Like, the jam and the compote that we use in our carrot cake might change seasonally.

1:10:56But those will stay. But everything else is kind of fair game, I would say. Maybe honey cake is also there to stay. So good. You know, it's an interesting—so our honey cake was my mother's favorite dessert. My mother loved honey cake. It's also known as a medovic or medanapita, like we would say in Serbia. Not my favorite dessert, I will be honest with you. Maybe, as you said earlier, before we started, you were talking about the gefilte fish. Like, to me, like, honey cake, too, was like, you know, no kids like honey. Like, all the kids love chocolate. Yeah. Like, honey, I was like, oh, gosh, why do I have to have, like, a honey dessert or sour cream dessert?

1:11:31Like, enough. Like, Nutella, Ferrero Rocher. So I never really cared much for it, but she loved it. And when we were opening a bakery, we were like, OK, we, you know, it's called Honey's Bakery and it's named after my mother. You know, it was my nickname for her, Honey. And it was her favorite dessert. It kind of made sense for us to put on a menu. And I didn't really feel that people, it's not that I didn't know people are not going to, it kind of became popular, I would say, in the last few years. not like mainstream, but I didn't feel people are going to order as much as they did. Actually, we sell more honey cake than we sell of our Brooklyn blackout cake, which to me is shocking because chocolate, no matter where I worked, the chocolate desserts were always the best selling.

1:12:18The chocolate cake was always the best selling. And maybe it's because you can find so many amazing chocolate cakes around the city, but you cannot find so many honey cakes. So maybe that's why people are more like interesting, intrigued to try it. But we consistently have high sales of our honey cake, which is kind of like, you know, honey layers with like sour cream and caramel mousse. And it's kind of layered. It's kind of our cross between traditional and American icebox cakes, I would say, and kind of let it sit until it's softened. And so maybe that is something that will also stay since it's doing much, much better than I ever expected.

1:12:54That's so interesting. It's really interesting to be like the owner and in the POS system and able to see the sale every week. I think I imagine it must be this kind of tension between wanting to give people what you know they want and also give people new things that they might not know that they want, but they probably do. Yes. And, you know, of course, like you have to give people what they want, right? Like I cannot go too esoteric and crazy. But I think that kind of gave us, seeing how Honeycake performed gave us like a confidence. Okay, maybe we should start like featuring here and there more of these essential European cakes that I grew up eating and try to, you know, bring that background of mine in a bakery a little bit more and share, like, love for these cakes with people and maybe they'll appreciate better and, like, enjoy better.

1:13:44Yeah, I think also when it's, like, in the context of everything else that you have to offer, like, people, most people, I imagine, are not buying just one thing. Maybe they're getting, like, a little sampler platter. They're bringing something home for somebody who didn't make it. so it can kind of like round out an offering. And that's actually another surprise of mine. Like rarely we see somebody just coming in and grabbing one thing. I mean, it's very hard to look at that case. I have this experience, right? I love carrot cake and your carrot cake is, even the presentation is not what you would expect as the traditional one.

1:14:14It's this beautiful kind of rectangular layered slice. Then I see banana pudding. Then I see the like pistachio, falva, rice crispy tree. That texture is crazy. That's crazy. And, you know, when we, you know, pistachio rice crispy is such a quintessential American thing that we were like, and we love it, both Shilpa and I love it. And she actually also published a great recipe for Rice Krispies for Bon Appetit magazine. And we use that recipe as a base to make our current version, which is pistachio and sesame halva. And we were like, OK, let's put it on the menu. We both love it. I felt like, OK, like, you know, people make it at home.

1:14:51Like, maybe we'll have few people buy it. But let's just have it. It's not really that hard or difficult to make. And people just went crazy for it. Like we go, I'm not joking. I think we probably go through six or seven large cases, like a wholesale cases of Rice Krispies a week. We just cannot keep up their times. Like we like sell out of the Rice Krispies and we make them in these like a big frames, like a sheet tray frames. And sometimes we have to make like four or five sheet tray frames. and like our super we have two supervisors am supervisor and pm supervisor in the kitchen and practically all they do half a day is like make rice krispies and we all just like laugh how popular it is and how many people have it i was like it's so amazing it's fascinating i'm obsessed with it because the texture is it has that kind of like snappy crumbly rice krispie texture that you'd expect but then the like sesame halva is like yes almost kind of like melting while you're eating it.

1:15:51Also, you give it and like, it's hefty. I dropped it in my bag and I felt my bag like sink down a little bit, you know? Sometimes we are like, okay, are we crazy to have such large portions? But then again, I'm like, that's an American thing, right? Like, that's what I felt about America when I came here. Everything was large, oversized and big. And I felt like, okay, that's how our cookie is. Like our cookie is huge. It's like near, I think it's like six inches. It's like, I think it's like 160 grams. I don't know. Forgive me. I don't know what's in the ounces. It's big, like our Rice Krispies too.

1:16:22And I feel that's what people also get attracted to it. Like, you know, it's flavor texture too, but when they see it like such an imposing big chunk of the Rice Krispies, they really love it. And, you know, we wanted to make a little more fun. Like we make it with pistachios, pistachio paste, chopped pistachios. We make our own halwa. So, you know, we do love seed and meal halwa, but we use seed and meal tahini, but we make our own halwa with it, which is also another fun thing to do. Not that difficult and challenging. And it's also what I, you know, many people don't realize the Balkan was under the Ottoman empire for nearly five centuries.

1:16:58So our food is very similar to like Middle Eastern food, what you would consider. So, you know, halwa was a part of food growing up too. So, you know, even though we took like an American treat, like Rice Krispies, and we It kind of gave it like, you know, Serbian and Indian twist to it because, you know, halvut too and pistachios is also very common in India too. As many people probably know more about Indian food than Serbian food. So, you know, we always kind of look how we can bring certain elements of our background into food that we make. Yeah, I really like that. And I think just to the point of having big serving sizes, it just makes it give this feeling that it's a shareable thing, right?

1:17:41Yes. Yes. I think I would be like, I mean, I could definitely eat that Rice Krispie treat by myself. But the last time I had it, I brought it over to my friends who live nearby. I took a knife, cut it up into, you know, four chunks. And it was like the perfect way to kind of eat it. And that's what we want. And it's really amazing to see, especially on the weekends when I work the door, like I get to see all the things firsthand. And like seeing like families or four or five coming in, grabbing a few things. and they'll go on a counter, like cut things in pieces and then go about their way, go across the park and just sit there and enjoy.

1:18:12It's really amazing to see that. Yeah, it'll be really nice once it's like proper spring summer here to get to go to the park or Tompkins or something. And we are looking to maybe spiff up our outdoor as well and have some seating too. Yeah. Yeah, I love just sitting. It reminds me of Europe, right? Like cafes and bakeries, there's always like an outdoor seating where you go grab a coffee or pastry and just like sit down and just enjoy people pass what look people passing by yeah my favorite like my dream day is that it's nice enough out that i can leave my apartment in the morning and then just have no plans but walk around and just like go eat a pastry outside and then bump into somebody in the park and just kind of exist yeah exactly talking about the warmer months i'm curious if you have any like dream plans for like summer produce on the menu or anything like that oh yeah absolutely like i just cannot wait like we Couldn't really wait.

1:19:01We already put rhubarb and a strawberry on our menu. We managed to get, you know, I love Harry's berries. I'm sure you're familiar with them. They're wonderful strawberries from California, small farm, like the greatest strawberries ever. So we did this like croissant queen of mentart with passion fruit and strawberry. And it's very popular. So we're probably going to keep that format throughout the year and just kind of change the fruit. Probably going to bring some cakes. We were talking about some new cakes as well that we want to highlight. talking about doing like coffee cake I love coffee cake sour cherry coffee cake was very popular growing up and like one of those like things that you make just a daily snack so you know we're working with testing but sour cherries as well you know love peaches I just really cannot wait I'm really excited I mean you know if you ever eaten my desserts at Gramsci Tavern you know that I loved fruit, love berries, love stone fruit, loves cherries, pies as well.

1:20:01And I just really cannot wait. Like we so far, we had only cream pies on the menu from lemon meringue to like banana. Right now we have like a banana, butterscotch, pudding, cream pie. But I just cannot wait to have more fruit pies available. I'm so excited. I love fruit desserts. But whenever I go to the market to buy fruit, I have all these things that I want to do with it. And I always just end up eating it by itself. I think probably because I love baking. I like to eat baked goods, but I'm not really a baker. And also because I just have a hard time like not eating all of the peaches. So I need somebody like you to make something else with them so I can have that kind of secondary experience.

1:20:36And we just ordered soft serve machine. So I'm so excited about that. It's actually arriving this week. I didn't realize it's going to be so quick, but it's kind of good because it will allow us time to like test. I never worked much with a soft serve machine. And surprisingly, there's not that much information available. There's a lot about ice creams, but not so much about a soft serve. So I'm kind of excited to start recipe testing for that. And we have like some fun ideas that we will how to utilize the soft serve. We also have a takeout window, too. So we have some fun ideas of how to utilize that.

1:21:08Maybe. Like soft serve in the takeout window? Maybe. Maybe beyond our current hours of operation. We'll see. Maybe on the weekends. So we are doing some plans, talking about a lot of different things. You know, there's so many, so many wonderful bakeries in East Village. There's so many options that you can enjoy in the morning and in the afternoon. But all of us close by 5, 6. And there's not so many options in the evening, but people still want to have desserts, especially on the weekend. So we are kind of contemplating how to utilize our space and maybe extend our hours on certain days. I'm really excited about this.

1:21:44I love soft serve. Me too. Mr. Softy, I will run down the rock for. but I think there are not a lot of restaurants. I guess like Leo Sourdough Pizza in Williamsburg, they do really good seasonal soft serve. They do like this Concord grape flavor in the fall, swirled with salted caramel that during the pandemic, my whole activity for the day would be like walking to Williamsburg to get this Concord grape soft serve when it was in season. Yeah, I don't think they've ever had theirs yet. You should go. We could go as like a little field trip and try it, but I think soft serve is like— Yeah, LaIndustry makes a great soft serve.

1:22:18They do too. Yeah, and I don't know, have you had Seed and Mill soft serve? No. I think it's like one of the best. It's also vegan, too. It's like an oat soft serve with the challah. Oh. It's really, really, really good. Do they do it out of Chelsea Market? Yeah, out of Chelsea Market. They have it year-long. It's pretty good. Wow. It's small, but like it's just enough. Like, you know, challah is kind of rich by itself. Soft serve is also on a richer side, too. So I love soft serve. I mean, that's one of the things that I went crazy for when I came to America Dairy Queen. like Indiana Dairy Queen was huge.

1:22:50So to me, I was just like, oh my God. Or like my first job ever in food industry when I was in college was at McDonald's. McDonald's have famous soft serve and I just loved it. Every night when, you know, when we were breaking down and cleaning, I would, when we were emptying machine, I would put like chocolate fudge on the bottom, soft serve and caramel sauce on top. And that was like my snack. Yum. I loved it. Oh, I love picturing like a little Miro doing that. I feel like soft serve is all about the swirl Were you doing a good job swirling in your college McDonald's days? I imagine you would be.

1:23:22Do you think there's a secret to it or is it just like keeping the movement going? Yeah, it's just keeping the movement going. It takes, you know, I haven't done it in 20 years, so it's probably going to take a second to get back. But yeah, there was the way that you were moving your hand with a cup to like get that. It's not, it looks easy, but it's really not that easy. I know that it isn't because it varies so much at the different Mr. Softy trucks around the city. and there's one by Fort Greene Park that's like my one that I go to and there are these two guys who I think are cousins who do it and I look in the window and if it's one of them, then I go and if it's the other one, then I don't because the difference in the swirl is so substantial that I just feel like you get a lot less ice cream that way.

1:24:01Of course. And we also eat visually, right? Like first we'd be in our eyes so you do want to make sure that it looks good. Okay, so we've talked about stone fruit, we've talked about soft serve, we've talked about the window. Is there anything else in the future of honeys that you want to share right now? Yeah, we're going to have sandwiches soon. So that's something that, like we always, you know, it's called Honey's Bakery and Cafe. So we always wanted to have a cafe aspect, not, you know, always more bakery, but less cafe. But we wanted to have sandwiches and such. We right now have a lot of great, like savory options, like baked goods in the morning, as well as our flatbread.

1:24:33But we weren't able to put our sandwiches on the menu because we had a little, like, not an issue, but it took us a time to get more power in. You know, anyone that lives in New York, they ever did construction knows that it takes months sometimes. years with working with a Con Edison and dealing with like a gas and electricity. So we finally figured it out. We have enough power. I myself did not know how much power panini presses take. Like one panini press takes more amps than like all of our mixers put together. And we have six. Yes. It's like I think it's like 25 amps or something. And an 80-quart Hobart is only like 9 amps.

1:25:08So like it's huge. Like induction burners as well. Those paninis are getting like really pressed, huh? Yes. Yeah. it's really like takes a lot of power like an induction burners too like you know we can only have like one induction burner in the plug at the time it's like it's the first two three months like you know we had to open and we bought all this equipment but you know we had to open even though the we did not have all of the amps that we tended to so it was kind of like plugging and unplugging at least like once or twice a day on the weekends we will like lose power like the Breakers was 11 and we would have to.

1:25:40So it was a funny, very New York. It was funny, but now we have power. Now we have people. We are now training everybody on it. We are doing some recipe testing. So hopefully we're going to start soon rolling some more sandwiches and more savory options. Okay. I'm so excited to come back and try all of these things, hopefully at once or in many trips. And to close today, I want to play a rapid fire, like taste check with you. I'm going to ask you to play some favorites. It's going to be fine. Okay. Your favorite, like, ice cream flavor, like, to get at a shop? Haggadah's Pisachio. It's more tasty like an almond extract, but I love almond extract.

1:26:18Your favorite item in the pastry case at Honey's right now? Right now, I would say it's our strawberry passion fruit croissant tart. The most difficult recipe that you've served at Honey's to, like, get just right? Oh, my God. Lemon pound cake. Can you believe that? Why? Oh, my God. I don't know. Like, I just, it was, you know everybody talks about how difficult it is to make croissants and laminated pastry but people really rarely talk about how difficult it is to make cakes right like we it's one thing when you make like a one small cake at home or even in the bakery but when you try to scale things up like you know we don't make like one loaf of lemon pound cake we would make like 10 at a time in like a large not the small but like huge huge loaves and you know so there's so many things that go into it and we were just having really difficult and challenging time making it consistent and making like the perfect like fluffy texture that we wanted like you know i always kind of imagine it to be like starbucks like lemon loaf yeah and you know but they're a large you know they're a large corporation that they have large commissaries they probably add additives to it that makes it a little bit more consistent but we of course don't want to go down that route so it was really like it was kind of inconsistent and we're still kind of working on it and one point i was just I said, let's just take it off the menu and let's just like work behind the scene until we figure it out.

1:27:37And, you know, because you want it to be like nice, soft, tender, like even crumb. You want it to have like a like pungity, like lemony flavor and like acidity. And a lot of people loved it. I just personally was not happy with it. And sometimes when you're not happy with it, like it's just even though like other people, maybe it's just better to like retire it. And, you know, you don't want to be like every day be like, oh, gosh, shit, like why? It's not what I want. Make room for all the other things. Everybody, you know, you have to be happy yourself first and then your guests will be happy too.

1:28:13Okay. One of your favorite places to get dessert in the city? Oh, in the city. I mean, there's so many. You can do a couple. Where do I start? Like in East Village, I love, you know, our neighbors, I love La Cabra. they have a delicious pen suiz. I love it. Libre, they have tahini chocolate croissant, which I recently had. It was so, so delicious. Where else? I'm thinking about the restaurants. Like Cloud, across the street from us, they have a really good pistachio bundt and a chocolate cake. I love to go to Radio 2. It's in, I live nearby, and I just was there last weekend. They had this delicious custard croissant tart that was really good.

1:29:00There's so many. There's so many. Radio opened a new location in Prospect Heights, which is closer to me. And I really want to get the rhubarb custard croissant that they're doing. But I don't, per earlier conversation, I don't wake up early enough to get it. And it's always sold out by the time that I go. And one of my favorite desserts I've ever done no longer is available. You might know Chickalicious, Chica Tillman, who had like a famous Chickalicious dessert bar and across the street she used to have chickalicious club where she used to make uh pistachio sorry tiramisu mochi so she would make like tiramisu like it was lady finger sponge like mousse and then she will cover it in like tiramisu wrap and it was like one of the greatest like desserts i have ever had in my life honestly she's no longer the funny thing is like chica tillman and dot tillman they're neighbors they live in our building right above honey's bakery.

1:29:52So I see them quite often in a bakery all the time. Could you please? She's retired now. She closed her shop like a few months ago. And I'm like, please, can you just make it for me? Pay you whatever you need or just share the recipe or maybe like we'll do a pop-up one day. But I would say that's probably one of the greatest desserts I've ever had in my life. You said tiramisu mochi and my heart stopped. I love last night I ate a bunch of like mochi green tea ice cream, you know, like the ones you buy from the bodega. But it's still it's so So good. Yeah, the mochi texture is like chewy, soft.

1:30:23Like, you know, it's so beautiful and so amazing. A Serbian dessert that you think should be more widely known, like, outside the country? Oh, I would say a reform torta, which is a chocolate cake. It's like a walnut layers, multi-layer walnut and then chocolate butter mousse. You know, it's an interesting story. I never was able really to pinpoint exactly how that cake originated, but many people say that it was the product of these socialist reforms that were passed after the World War II when certain ingredients were made widely available to the masses. You know, like they couldn't really produce butter, so they were able to produce margarine, so everybody was able to, like, you know, cook with margarine.

1:31:08There was more chocolate available. There was more nuts available. So the cake is made with walnuts, eggs, chocolate margarine, not butter. So these things that you really didn't have available, suddenly you do. So it kind of became one of the, you know, traditional cakes that, you know, everybody, maybe in different parts of Yugoslavia was called differently. In Serbia it was called reform cake. And it's delicious. I love it. It's kind of like daquoise and with like chocolate buttercream. Our good friend Rose Levy Birnbaum, who wrote Cake Bible, she loved it so much that she actually included the shilpa.

1:31:52It was Shilpa's recipe, not mine, which is a funny thing, right? Because though I grew up eating all these like Central European cakes, I never like really baked them myself. And it was always like, Shilpa developed her honey cake, not me. So I just want to make it clear. She did the reform cake for Rose's book and probably we're going to put it in the menu eventually. We would start talking about it. It's kind of like funny though. She herself have never grew up eating those things. She ended up like developing and making them and they're making them just as good, if not better than many that I had back home.

1:32:26Wow, I can't wait to try it on the menu. Okay, I don't know if this exists for you, but something that you would never make from scratch. At home or at work? I guess if either category, if you have one. At home, I would never make croissants or like laminated dough. Okay, but you make them at work. I make them at work, but it's a different, right? Like where you have a big space, you have a sheeter, You have like, you know, you have enough of refrigeration space, right? At home, like it's a small fridge. Like, you know, it is making laminated oil is very temperamental. And it's a lot of, you know, temperature control that you need.

1:32:56It's a lot of hassle, right? So like it works, of course, it's easy. Like when you have these things. Right. And then like, you know, why would I make it at home when I can't make it at home? You could go to your bakery. So I would never do it at work. But at work, I would never make it. Though I did try to make Speculous, for example, the Biscoff cookie butter. I tried to make it at work, even in Gramsci Town a few times. It just never gets that texture and that flavor. So, you know, right now we have it on the menu. We're putting in our monkey bread on the weekends. And it's something that we just buy Biscoff cookie butter.

1:33:29And you just cannot beat it. Yeah, it's like making your own ketchup versus buying it. Yes, exactly. Probably it's even easier to make ketchup, I will be honest with you. It's like really, you know, grind. You need to have these machines, right, which it's not available. Like these grinders that you really, you know, Robocoup trying to make it, it always looks like some whipped paste. Never looks what it's supposed to. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, final question. A fictional food scene, like from a book or a movie that you wish you could eat in real life? One of the earlier food memories of food that I saw on TV was, as a kid I loved X-Files.

1:34:05I don't know, you're a little bit younger than me. No, X-Files is a classic. It's a classic. Everyone has to watch it. I loved X-Files. And I remember this episode. I really don't remember anything else about the episode. It's probably some like monster government conspiracy, whatever. But the first opening scene was this lady who I believe was a spy or something. She was in the airport and she was like eating these like big, huge, what I learned there on were dumplings, gnosis. But at the time, like, you know, young Miro in like Yugoslavia, like we didn't even know what Asian food is at the time.

1:34:33So I was just fascinated with just like huge, meaty, juicy, like dumplings that she was eating. And I was like, oh, my God, like, what is this? Like, you know, and we didn't have internet at the time, just like to Google and find out. And then later on, years later, I've learned it was gyoza. It was dumplings. And I just cannot wait to have it. And I still think about this scene. Like, it was such a, maybe a dumb thing, but like, just left such a big impression on me. And today, like, you know, I love dumplings. I have never met a dumpling or gyoza that I did not like. And I always think about that scene.

1:35:04I love that answer. I think you are the first person that has brought up X-Files in all the times that I've asked this question. But it's a great answer. I love Scully and Mulder. I love them. Scully forever. Yeah, I feel like I hope I meet one day Julianne Anderson and David Duchovny. They're such a great. If they came into the bakery, what would you give them? I don't know. I mean, I met a lot of celebrities over the years and, you know, even presidents. Like, I don't know. Like, I feel like she's cool. She's having like this like resurgence with the sex education show, which is great and some other.

1:35:35So and she seems cool and fun. You don't see him so much around. But like I think there's such a big part of my growing up in the childhood. I really love that show. It was still my favorite show. I would really love to have them at Honey's Bakery. I don't know what would I do. Probably serve and take a picture. Give them everything. Tell them. Wait, I have to know what presidents you've met. Oh, I got a chance to cook for Bill and Hillary Clinton at Gramercy Tavern. They came in for like a private dinner and Obama also came and Michelle. Michelle was actually an untitled when we opened the Whitney Museum.

1:36:11During the opening Whitney Museum, I opened untitled at the Studio Cafe. So she was there. We got to cook for her and she also came in at Gramercy Tavern shortly after I started working too. He came in shortly after his presidency was over. I believe it was 2007 he came in for dinner. Wow. Well, Miro, I could really talk to you all day, but I think we'll close the episode here. Thank you so much for coming into the studio.

1:36:44This is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Logo and guest illustrations by Ellie Skrzat. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste. you