New cinnamon-sweet venture for Amy Rosen
Move over, macaroons. Take a seat, Cronut.
Amy Rosen is placing her bets on the not-so-ho-hum cinnamon bun.
Literally putting her money where her mouth is, the longtime food writer and seer is gunning to open a space devoted exclusively to the treats, all set to tah-dah in October at 825 College St.
And in a town where the lastquarter round of openings are abuzz — there’s the arrival of vampy monolith steak house STK in Yorkville, for instance, and the veggie temple that is David Lee’s Planta on Bay St. — Rosen’s saccharine enterprise qualifies as possibly the most intriguing of the season.
This is the thing: the Toronto tastemaker was the original arbiter of the influential, nationwide en-Route “Best New Restaurants” list, oversaw the food section of two other national magazines and has been on the hustings long enough to nab a James Beard nomination for food writing. And now — in a classic case of poacher-turned-gamekeeper — she’s volunteered to put herself in the critical fray.
“Pure, bourbon-based vanilla extract . . . free run eggs . . . milk and cream from Harmony Organic.” Rosen rhymed off the ABCs of her baking recently.
Lunching at Soho House, where she was, as per usual, giving off the drollness of a Janeane Garofalo and the intrepid savoir-faire of Dora the Explorer, she seemed unbothered by the torrent of judgment headed her way.
“All I’m selling is the perfect embodiment of what people expect from a cinnamon bun,” she said. “If people don’t want to eat them, that’s fine.”
Press her some more, and Rosen — who’s going into business solo — makes the case that the cinnamon buns are an odyssey into self. Being a 40-something freelance writer these days, and having spent so much of her life jet-setting for work, the idea of a bricks-and-mortar bakery is “literally grounding.”
Some women of a certain age, like Frances Mayes (or her alter-ego, Diane Lane), decide to refurbish a house in Tuscany. Others, like Rosen, start hawking cinnamon buns.
The eureka moment came last Christmas when, at her family’s cottage, she whipped some up for her extended clan.
“For the first time, everybody was quiet,” she remembers. “Looking around the table, everyone from a 1 1⁄2- year-old to a 77-year-old to tweens and everyone in between . . . I realized, everyone loves cinnamon buns.” She conjectured out loud about opening up a place, to instantly encouraging oohs.
It all happened pretty fast. It was last spring that Rosen slipped me news about her plans. She hunted for just the right space. She hired two eager beavers from the culinary program at George Brown. She wooed a designer for the space. She experimented (a lot) on her buns, making ample mental Post-it Notes.
“I started call up my chef friends and other people . . . and then I needed someone to say no,” she philosophizes.
“All I’m selling is the perfect embodiment of what people expect from a cinnamon bun.” AMY ROSEN COLLEGE ST. BUSINESS OWNER
Turns out that Rosen’s paternal grandfather once sold cinnamon buns off the back of a truck in Kensington Market
No one said no, so she said yes. Rosen isn’t giving up her other vocation. She plans to continue scribbling about food and, in fact, October is also the deadline she’s got looming for Toronto Eats, a cookbook project she has on the go derived from chefs in The 6 (a sequel to her 2014 book, Toronto Cooks).
There’s another baked goods back story, too: turns out that Rosen’s paternal grandfather (whom she never met) once sold cinnamon buns off the back of a truck in Kensington Market.
We then side-step our way into an interesting conversation about the gender politics of, well, cinnamon buns.
While women, she believes, are much more avid diehards of, say, cupcakes, both men and women will likely line up for cinnamon buns. In fact, she’s counting on it.
Still in the market for love, Rosen has a fantasy of a man coming into her place to buy a bun and boom! “Why not?” she asks.
She’s putting a new glaze on life.