BK 50
ZOË KANAN
Baker
Jun 16, 2022
Zoë Kanan is a baking phenom who’s igniting Brooklyn tastebuds with her pop-up bagel project at Prospect Heights’ KIT (Keep in Touch). Follow along on Instagram for the latest drops. We’ll wait. Pop-ups are all the rage (still!), but Kanan’s elite restaurant resume runs deep.
The cheerful, outgoing, yet focused prodigy was raised in Houston, Texas, by a respected BBQ pitmaster father and picked up a passion for challah and babka from her Jewish grandmother. This, coupled with a fierce work ethic and an unrelenting passion for food, drew Kanan to culinary school and New York City.
By age 24, Kanan could boast of stints at Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar, Four & Twenty Blackbirds, Vaucluse and Sadelle’s, under famed pastry chef Melissa Weller. Her next move was to serve as head baker for Freehand Hotel (a position created specifically for her). By creating menu items such as chocolate halva pie and rhubarb Persian love cake, Kanan put the hotel’s sweets offerings on the map.
Ask anyone who has worked with Kanan and they’ll tell you her ascension to the top is a fait accompli. In a 2019 interview for Eater that named Kanan an Eater Young Gun, Milk Bar’s Tosi said, “She’ll do whatever the hell she wants to do, whether the world is ready for it or not.”