Birthday everyday

Famous New York bakery Milk Bar preheats Austin hotel residency

Milk Bar's Christina Tosi is coming to show Austinites how birthday cake is done.

Photo courtesy of Milk Bar

Most people don't have favorite bakeries outside their hometown or the grocery store. That makes the achievements of New York-based Milk Bar that much more impressive.

Its cult-favorite confetti layer cake has become the image of a classic birthday cake among chefs and foodies, and pastry chef Christina Tosi is always making appearances to teach viewers how to make it — a great sign that Milk Bar isn't exactly worried about being replaced as the nation's bakery darling.

Austinites may recognize some of the grocery products like ice creams and crunchy cookies, but many have never had the chance to try its less shippable treats. However, this winter the Loren at Lady Bird Lake, an upscale hotel in Austin, will be welcoming Milk Bar for a six-month residency within its Cafe Collaboration Series.

The new series follows the hotel's Celebrity Guest Chef Series, which is also relatively new since its September debut. A release teases that the series will feature cakes, pastries, and other bakes by "world-renowned bakeries," but it does not say that the series will result in any new offerings — just ones that are not usually available in Austin.

As with the chef series, a portion of bakery collaboration proceeds will support the Loren Roots Imperative, which offsets the hotel group's carbon footprint through initiatives like buying land to regenerate and planting trees.

These tasty triumphs will be housed in Cafe at The Loren, which includes a coffee counter and lots of grab-and-go items.

Cafe at The Loren interior Photo by Jane Yun

Milk Bar offerings will include:

Confetti, Compost, Corn and Blueberry Cookies
Birthday Cake
Milk Bar Pie, with a sticky, buttery, salty-sweet filling in a hearty oat-cookie crust
Chocolate Birthday Cake
Red Velvet Cheesecake Cake
Birthday, Chocolate Birthday, and Red Velvet Cake Truffles

If this list looks surprisingly low-brow, that makes perfect sense for the brand. Although Tosi is formally trained, she and David Chang (founder of Momofuku, the hospitality group that initially owned Milk Bar) are both known for crafting classic snacks inspired by home kitchens and grocery store staples.

“Following our successful Celebrity Guest Chef Series, we’re thrilled to kick off celebrations early for 2024 by introducing this new collaboration at the cafe,” said the Loren's chef de cuisine Christian Grindrod. “We look forward to sharing these wonderful artisans and their products with this beautiful city."

The Milk Bar collaboration will begin in December, but no official opening date has been announced.

desserts pastry pastry chefs chefs hotels pop up

Whoops

Michelin goofs on a few restaurants honored in first Texas guide

Kau Ba/Facebook

Houston's Kau Ba has been removed from the Michelin Guide.

Texans' reactions to the first Michelin Guide in the state have ranged from glowing to unimpressed, but a few notable mix-ups are more concrete than differences in taste. The November 11 ceremony honored more than 100 restaurants across the state, but at least two were in error. In Dallas the guide confused two restaurants with each other, and in Houston one of them had closed.

Starting in Dallas: The Guide's release announcing the list of restaurants who'd won awards included The Charles, an award-winning Italian restaurant in Dallas' Design District, as one of 57 restaurants that earned a "Recommended" rating.

The Charles is a surely deserving restaurant that opened in 2018, the first concept from acclaimed food & beverage group Duro Hospitality, which has since gone on to open other restaurants such as El Carlos Elegante, Sister, and Cafe Duro.

But the Guide got the wrong Charles: The real recipient was Mister Charles, a sibling Duro Hospitality restaurant that opened at 3219 Knox St. in early 2024.

The Charles specializes in Italian and Texas-inspired dishes.

Mister Charles features French and Italian-influenced dishes.

It wasn't just an incorrect name; it listed the accompanying (incorrect) address.

A spokesperson for Michelin Guide verified that Mister Charles was the winner and said that the listing of The Charles was a mistake.

“This was an internal error caused by our geolocation process. The problem will be corrected in the most expeditious manner,” the spokesperson said. The Guide website has since updated the list and replaced The Charles with Mister Charles.

Having a difference of opinion about a critic's choices is one thing — but having an error of this magnitude is something else entirely.

And blaming "geolocation" as the source of the error is a curious excuse. Geolocation refers to the ability to track the whereabouts of an electronic device using GPS, cell phone towers, WiFi access points or a combination of these.

The Houston mix-up was also disappointing, but only involved one restaurant: In a press release issued Thursday, November 14, the Guide announced that it had removed Montrose Vietnamese restaurant Kau Ba from the list of Bib Gourmand recipients.

The reason: "Upon further investigation, our team has discovered the restaurant has been permanently closed since our Inspection team's visits occurred," the statement reads.

As has been widely noted in local media, Kau Ba closed earlier this month. The restaurant’s Instagram account now belongs to Alora, which is described as “a fresh Peruvian-Vietnamese fusion concept inspired by travels to Saigon.” It is expected to open soon.

Open since 2018, Kau Ba served an innovative take on Vietnamese fare created by Nikki Tran. The restaurant built on the notoriety Tran had achieved after being featured in two Netflix series: Somebody Feed Phil and Ugly Delicious. It earned considerable acclaim, including a spot in the Houston Chronicle’s top 100 restaurants as recently as 2023 and a nomination for Best Neighborhood Restaurant in the 2021 CultureMap Tastemaker Awards.

The restaurant went through a number of iterations during its tenure. For three-and-a-half years, Tran partnered with Aya Sushi owners Minette Corpuz and Bruce Kish to oversee operations, but they parted ways in February 2023.

In an email sent to Houston Public Media, Tran expressed regret over Michelin's decision.

“But we understand and respect Michelin’s decision to remove Kau Ba from its selection,” Tran said to HPM. “Exercising an abundance of caution from a legal position, I am not able currently to share further details of our situation but I do hope to follow up soon with more information.”

“Until then, on behalf of the entire Kau Ba team, we want to thank the entire culinary community for the recognition and support,” Tran added. “Kau Ba is proud of the dishes we created and look forward to sharing very soon what’s next.”

Thankfully in Austin, things seem to be going okay. The capital city swept the competition with seven stars (one more than Houston now that the change has been made), and two green stars for sustainability — in fact, the only green stars in the state.

Austin also had four of the first-ever barbecue restaurants to be awarded stars. Houston also had one.

Austin's winning restaurants were Barley Swine, Craft Omakase, Hestia, Olamaie, InterStellar BBQ, John Bates, La Barbecue, Alison Clem, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue.

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