Cream: It’s not just a Wu-Tang refrain, but also the muse behind Brooklyn-based chef Mina Park’s beloved cake studio 99. What started as a pandemic experiment has become a sensation both IRL and URL: Park has cemented herself among New York’s pastry elite with her signature cream cakes and plush pastel mochi, always ethereally light, unbelievably Instagrammable, and never too sweet. Her clients vary widely but the inherent romanticism of her aesthetic has made her a natural fit for the wedding circuit; last month, a towering cake display at the Materialists premiere afterparty won over the hearts of director Celine Song and TikTok alike. I caught up with Park a few days after the event as she was driving from her home studio in Bed-Stuy to Queens, where she does much of her sourcing.

Jake Stavis: Tell me how you came to pastry.

Mina Park: I wasn't formally trained. I was living in L.A. and my friend told me about a job at this catering company. I started in savory but I learned a lot about working with food, especially large amounts of it. Eventually a pastry position opened up at Cookbook Market, and it just kind of clicked.

JS: What kind of clients were you catering to - was it private clients or more corporate?

MP: We were catering for movie sets. It definitely wasn't very visual. But I do think these kinds of jobs taught me how to be efficient and how to properly prep. I think catering is probably one of the hardest jobs in the food industry.

JS: And in some ways it probably set you up well for creating food that is often enjoyed offsite and has to travel.

MP: It's very applicable to what I do now. Cookbook was very hands-on. They didn't have a sheeter. Everything was by hand and the team was really small. The woman who trained me came from Tartine in San Francisco, and another woman in the store was a Chez Panisse alum. So there was a heavy California influence in the pastries I was making from the get-go, and that’s still part of my ethos today. Everything is about the fruit. There's not really much manipulation going on so sourcing is super important.

JS: There’s an interesting tension between the simplicity of the flavors and your very detail-oriented approach to decorating. Even just thinking about the places that you've named – Tartine maybe is a little more formal but I think of Cookbook as pretty rustic and ingredient-driven. I'm curious how you started to pivot towards more piping and more components.

MP: So after Cookbook, I went to Tartine in Los Angeles, and then I jumped to this fine dining restaurant, Nightshade. Everything was super technical and composed. Tartine was kind of an in-between point.

JS: It's not fussy.

MP: It's not fussy, but it's definitely clean. Working at Nightshade activated something in me. I realized I was capable of constructing some really complicated things. Also the way Max [Boonthanakit, pastry chef of Nightshade and current exec chef at Camphor] writes recipes was really eye-opening - he wasn’t fussing around making laminated dough. It was a lot more mousses and delicate chocolate shells and sorbets. I feel like that's a very Asian approach, using simple components to make really complicated looking desserts. That was kind of a light bulb moment for me, realizing you actually don't need to get super complicated with your execution; it leaves more room to make something more extravagant looking.

JS: A friend of ours was telling me about a pop-up where the chef had made tortellini in brodo. When you strip back and reduce components of your food, there's less to hide behind. You need to execute it really well. That’s something remarkable about your work, how you can do so much with relatively little.

MP: Limiting yourself is more conducive to creativity.

JS: I think the same is true in the events world - it’s easier for us to play in a sandbox with some walls around it, so to speak, rather than having no constraints. Without those limits, it’s like, what do you actually want?

MP: A lot of times, people don't know what they want, you know? But I definitely thrive under limited circumstances. I'm very much a problem solver.

JS: What's your relationship to plated desserts these days?

MP: It's such a different way to think. And I love collecting plates. It triggers my hoarding instincts, and I love to show off what I’ve found.

JS: After Nightshade, where did you go next?

MP: That’s when the pandemic hit, and I relocated to New York. It was kind of this new age when a lot of people were experimenting with pre-orders and pickups. I started making my own dessert menus - it started with cookies and cream puffs and things like that. Slowly it evolved into just cream puffs. Then it was cream cakes. Cream was kind of like the inspiration for everything.

JS: I love cream as a throughline. I want to talk about your aesthetic inspiration. I know from our previous conversations that you're an anime fan.

MP: I’m playing with this Japanese Lolita subculture. It’s this hyper romanticized take on European aesthetics. France would never claim that, but I think that's what's so fun and subversive about the aesthetic.

JS: Something I love about Korean and Japanese bakeries is how they’ll take a prototype rooted in classic French pastry, but then engineer it to perfect all of these different elements so it becomes its own new product.

MP: Korea's interpretation of European food has this hyper perfectionist quality. The “Euro look” these days is a little more crooked or wobbly, but in Korea, they'd be like, no, that cannot be crooked. We're getting these ruffles in order.

JS: Especially in Western popular culture now, there is this sort of fetishizing of messy homestyle recipes, whereas if you go to the Korean bakery, if they say they’re inspired by France, it’s rococo to the nines.

MP: It’s rooted in pure fantasy. You're not really drawing from firsthand experience. It's like doll-ifying a culture.

JS: Can you describe the 99 cinematic universe?

MP: I always imagine these girlies hanging out at cafes and ordering tons of dessert and probably not eating dinner, you know? That’s the 99 Girl. I want to keep making cakes that she wants to buy. I’m probably mostly for the girls and gays, but to be honest, I'm totally comfortable with that.

JS: I'm curious about the name 99.

MP: I didn’t really think too much about it - it was just the name of my food blog. I actually shared the account with two of my roommates and we were going to 99 Ranch a lot at the time. We would cook and post all these pictures of our fucked up food. We were doing Asian fusion, which I think still describes what I do now - mixing and matching different Asian cultures.

JS: Where'd you grow up?

MP: I grew up in Atlanta.

JS: So how did you end up in California?

MP: Well, my dad's side is from California. I wanted to experience living somewhere where there's such a huge Asian diaspora. I didn't really get to experience that in Atlanta, and even at RISD, which was a pretty international school, it didn't feel like I was really connecting. Going back to LA was about trying to connect with where I came from.

JS: What was your relationship to Korean food and sweets growing up? Did you have Tous les Jours or Paris Baguette around?

MP: Those spots came a bit later, but there were more mom and pop style places. I grew up going there after church. My mom would meet up with all her church friends and we would just be stuck there for hours. There’s definitely a nostalgia for those places. My relationship with Korean food is a bit different - I came into that later, but as far as sweets go, it was an instant connection. I really didn't like most of the sweets that you get in the South - everything was way too sweet. At some point my dad just started baking cream cakes at home. He picked up this random hobby for like a month. It's honestly such a fever dream. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but I remember all of the cake pans and equipment. That was the reason my family had a stand mixer. I didn’t even realize you could bake like that at home. That was really cool.

JS: I'm curious about resources that were important in developing your craft. I get the sense that you're a child of the internet.

MP: Yeah, YouTube 100%. That's honestly like where I learned most of the stuff that I'm doing right now. A lot of like ASMR baking videos, they’re legit! If you dig around enough, there's some really good recipes.

JS: Do you have any faves?

MP: J'adore is great. I based my sponge recipe off of hers and she has a similar formula for her cream. I tweaked mine later. Because it's a video, it’s engineered for views, so those cakes have to look perfect.

JS: Have you ever been tempted to delve into content production?

MP: I have a tripod and stuff but I'm a working girl. It's a full-time job.

JS: What excites you in savory food these days?

MP: The latest fixation of mine is Greek food. It's just like really nice ingredients. I feel like Greek eating at its best is a really full table, with all of these different vegetables and seafood.

JS: Greek food to me is very ingredient-driven and it's not something that typically hides behind technique. You have lots of pies, but even those, there's not a lot of exquisite crimping or anything like that, you know?

MP: But execution again is really important for that type of food. It's hard to say what excites me in making food for myself. I'm very much more of a diner than a cook in that way. Once I'm done with dessert, I'm not trying to be in the kitchen anymore. I'm all over the place when it comes to food, to be honest. Like I'll eat anything. I eat a lot in Queens.

JS: I'm curious about some of your favorite spots to shop in Queens.

MP: I definitely love the fruit stores scattered down Main Street in Flushing. They’re almost like gift stores - they’re selling fruit that you would bring over to someone’s house or for a family member. I really like shopping in Jackson Heights for South and Southeast Asian ingredients. The Thai markets there are great.

JS: Do you have any go-to snacks that you pick up when you're sourcing?

MP: I always go to Pata Market because their sweets are really great.

JS: What did you study at RISD?

MP: I studied graphic design.

JS: Did you ever do any architecture?

MP: No, I don't know if I would be good at it. It's like really a lot of numbers.

JS: I'm asking because you're building these unbelievably towering cakes. Have you ever had any mishaps? How do you ensure that the cakes support themselves?

MP: It’s definitely trial and error. I'm starting to push my limits lately, but for a lot of these super massive cakes, I'm actually building them with dummies. You could build entirely using cake with enough dowels and boards and a little bit of handiwork, but it would be tricky. The Quarters cake was really crazy, I had to drill into it. My assistant works for a ceramic artist and thankfully she understood what needed to be done. I'm lucky to have a lot of people like that around me.

JS: Are there other media that you enjoy working in or want to get involved in?

MP: I haven't even dabbled in it, but I’m interested in textiles for sure. I’m interested in pattern making. When I'm working with fruit and the shapes that naturally come from it, I kind of tend towards turning them into patterns. I think it'd be cool to translate that into paper or digitize.