The early aughts in New York were something of a heyday for pastry-forward establishments: P*ng, Will Goldfarb’s Room 4 Dessert, Sam Mason’s Tailor (arguably, where even the savory courses and cocktails tended to lean dessert-y), and, opened in 2003, ChikaLicious Dessert Bar, which at the time of its debut was unlike anything else in New York. The 22-seat counter was modeled after omakase restaurants from chef Chika Tillman’s home in Japan. Running it along with her husband, Don, Chika didn’t expect ChikaLicious to last more than six months. “It was just, ‘Let’s see what happens,’” says Don, “‘and then we can go get normal jobs after this experience.’” Instead, it soon saw lines out the door and, in the end, became something of an institution during its 21-year run. Saturday was the final night of service, the room filled with regulars who’d gotten word and booked ahead of time. Before the closing, Chika and Don talked to us about the bar, the cake store and café they’ll continue to run, and the impact they had on the city’s dining scene.
Take me back to 2003. You’d been in Atlanta. How did this place come to be?
Don Tillman: We came back to New York so Chika could take a pastry-chef job at Bid in the Sotheby’s auction house. We moved in August 2001, and the restaurant opened the night before 9/11. The world changed and here we are. We live around the corner and were just walking around. We went to a wine shop nearby and found this place was for rent. Back in those days, there were still telephones on the corners. So I went to the corner, called the Realtor and asked what the deal was. We took a look at it and thought it was something that we could work with. Our concept was, How do you do an upscale dessert that doesn’t require that you eat at a $300-per-person restaurant to enjoy?
It took a long time for the city to recover from 9/11 and the recession. Did you have any sort of nerves when you opened?
DT: Well, not really. We felt it was something different. And if you’re going to try something different, this is the place to do it because there are people who are going to write about it. It’s something that we wanted to do. I didn’t want to die not having tried it.
You were just going to take the risk.
DT: Who had ever heard of a restaurant that sells just desserts? And at the time, it was $12, and that was pretty expensive for people. I even remember some neighborhood people walking by and they would start laughing. We felt, because of all the work and effort that goes into making the dessert, it was pretty cheap. Especially for three courses.
When did you realize it was going to be around a bit longer than six months?
DT: The first night, we did maybe 11 covers, and they were all media people. People like the “Fat Guy,” who ran eGullet and wrote for quite a few publications. He was the first one to put the word out. He knew the chef from Bid, Matt Seeber, who introduced him to Chika. We had people writing about it even prior to the opening, and it just kind of blew up. Within six months, there were people waiting halfway down the block to get in. And not just regular people. One of our first customers was the owner of the Cheesecake Factory. He lived in California. He came here three times, actually. It was always people like that.
Even though you thought, Okay, this might only last six months — you never considered veering from the all-dessert idea?
DT: Yeah. Even though I wanted to. I was thinking we could have people coming in here all day. We could open at seven o’clock in the morning and close at midnight. But that was just never Chika’s vision.
Chika Tillman: Because the smells are not right. The savory smells in the refrigerator cannot be next to the eggs or butter. Then the ham’s smell starts mingling with the butter — it doesn’t make any sense. Sandwiches cannot be in the same refrigerator.
DT: You can imagine I’ve heard that speech a million times over 20 years. But I’ve got to give it to her: She’s never wavered for one moment.
ChikaLicious is also the last one of these small dessert restaurants that opened in the 2000s. How were you able to sustain it?
DT: We have a really high rate of return business. I see some people every week. So I would say a very large percentage of people who’ve come here over the past 10, 15 years that often. We’re not open until two o’clock in the morning, so you have to come and you have to plan your entire day around coming here. How many people are willing to do that?
Who has been your most regular customer?
DT: His name’s David. He lives around the corner. He came every day during COVID. This is when people couldn’t actually walk into the store. We had tables outside. He’d sit out there and just hang out, enjoy his dessert. How many years ago would you say he started coming here?
CT: Eighteen, 19.
DT: Jesus Christ.
CT: He was living in London when he first started coming, and then moved to D.C. Whenever he was in New York, he would come every day. And then he moved to New York City, and since then, he’s been once a week.
DT: Since we told regulars that Chika was retiring, he’s been here every day.
You have staff that’s been with you for a long time, as well?
DT: If you’re doing this level of dessert, you need comparable labor. You need professionals. I think we’ve had five sous-chefs in 20 years. Our fourth, Eijiro “EJ” Nagano, used to work at Supreme. He was a skateboarder and model with all the clothes and all that stuff. And we’ve had Erwin Castrejon with us for the last 12 years. The smartest, most talented of anyone anywhere. He began as a dishwasher, and worked his way up to GM of the Dessert Club , which we ran across the street. He replaced EJ as our final sous in 2018.
I don’t want to leave out anyone who helped us. Miro Uskokovic’s support of Chika and ChikaLicious has been invaluable over the years. We are a small mom-and-pop, and there have been times where we could not make Chefs’ Warehouse or Baldor’s minimum order requirements for delivery. Other times, deliveries would go awry on a Friday, leaving us short for the weekend. We often reached out to Miro, Marco Canora, and Andrew Carmellini as lifelines. I want to give them their flowers for always being willing to help a brotha out.
If there’s something Chika is known for, it’s definitely the Fromage Blanc Island Cheesecake.
CT: I was maybe 13, 14 years old, and then went to a French restaurant in Japan. Those days, I was already eating a lot. They had that kind of cheesecake, and when I ate it I fell in love. “Can I have it to go?” “No, you cannot do that.” So I ate another one at the same time, and ever since then, it’s stuck in my brain. When I was invited to cook at the Bid Auction House, I started making a recipe.
We called it “cheesecake” because it’s cheesecake, but Upper East Side people — they didn’t like it at all. They need the cheesecake [she makes a triangle with her hands]. It came back to the kitchen so many times. They wouldn’t accept it. So when we were talking about opening a restaurant, we probably checked over a hundred different places from Harlem on down, but I said, “Not the Upper East Side!”
I don’t give away the recipe. Only the sous-chefs know, and then they have to sign a paper before they start learning how to make it. So their parents don’t know how to make it. The recipe is going to go to my — how do you call it? — grave.
Looking back, how do you see your place fitting within the New York City restaurant industry?
DT: Chika has definitely made her mark in the field, in this city, even in this country. People could come here and get something that would never be replicated anywhere else. So that’s always been the driving force for continuing, and I don’t see another place like this in this city again.
CT: I think those people who have the same taste buds as me, they just come here because they cannot find this anywhere else. Some people understand, and a lot of people don’t understand. That’s fine. Don’t understand, and please do not come back, because I don’t change.
That conviction is what you need to continue doing something the exact way you want to, right?
CT: I feel disgust if I see something I don’t like, or if I smell something, by looking, it’s not right, and then I get really upset. Same as the food: If I don’t see a hundred percent, I don’t like that. When I’m making dessert and then I feel a little bit of something wrong, like maybe this strawberry is not right, I 86 it right away.
So when did you decide that you were closing the restaurant?
DT: Two years ago, Chika told me that she’s going to retire in the summer of ’24. I didn’t think very much about it. I thought she might change her mind, but she really hasn’t. I’m going to continue to run the online cake store and produce lava crêpe cakes here. You’ll be able to come here anytime and someone will be here doing production, and we’ll have some little savory things that you can munch on, but it won’t be anything resembling what it is now. Not a dessert bar, not a dessert focus, just a little café.
Why had you decided that you were going to retire this summer?
CT: I don’t want people to look at me and think, She should retire. It’s like President Biden.
I don’t want that, and I’m starting to kind of feel, a little, like I cannot carry two heavy plates at the same time. So I’m like, Got to go.
DT: She uses the Michael Jordan analogy. She wants to go out after the double repeat.
The Last Dance.
DT: It’s the last dance. She wants to go out like that. She doesn’t want to be Jordan on the Washington Wizards.
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