What I Do: Colleen Clawson at Milque Toast Bar

Chef Colleen Clawson can do wonders with a piece of toast. Like an artist with a blank canvas, she piles vibrant ingredients into colorful, edible works of art that are devoured in short order at Milque Toast Bar. Clawson spent years in fine dining kitchens (Five Bistro, Remy’s Kitchen & Wine Bar, Sidney Street Cafe, to name a few), but she and Amanda Geimer struck out on their own two years ago with a tiny breakfast and lunch spot across the alley from Clawson’s McKinley Heights home. Here, she shares her inspirations, how she blows off steam and a brief message to avocado toast haters.

“Sometimes I could make things simpler, but where’s the fun in that? You have this toast and it’s this thing with 18 different elements all of a sudden, but it looks really good like that and it tastes awesome, so I’m just leaving it. I guess I’d rather people wait two extra minutes.”

“[Avocado toast] is delicious. Like, what is your problem? Why do you hate life so much? Aren’t there much more important things to be angry about? I could give you a big long list of things that are legitimately wrong that you could get mad for.”

“I have a couple of reference books that I still always go back to because they’re just so good. ‘The Flavor Bible’ … I like ‘The Herbfarm Cookbook,’ which I think is out of print now, but it’s one of my all-time favorites that I always go back to. And the ‘Chez Panisse Cookbook.’ I have some of [Alice Waters’] other ones, too, which I really like, but that’s the one I always find myself looking at again and again. I guess for the same reason you use Google. There’s an aesthetic and a style that I really enjoy, and I feel more akin to that way of making things."

“I wish people understood they’re paying for a lot of things that aren’t just on your plate. There is a way that I could make this place even cheaper, but I’m not going to because I would have to sacrifice what’s more important.”

“It’s a great time to be in food in St. Louis. You could start with William Thomas Pauley over at Confluence Kombucha. I just saw him. Their particular place is completely unique. … Sometimes when you’ve worked in restaurants for a really long time, you look at things and you know what happened. Sometimes I look at his food and I’m like, ‘What happened? How did he do that?’ In a great way. It’s still mysterious to me.”

“I love dancing. We just went to a reggae show at 2720. Those guys are doing some really neat things down there. The whole arcade and Blank Space and Rumpshaker parties – those are really fun. I haven’t been to one of those in a while because it gets kind of late, and I’m way more boring than I used to be, but I feel better at 6 a.m.”

“There’s this frame shop in Soulard that I worked at where I discovered I really adored this craft. There’s definitely a craft to it. We built everything. There’s matting in framing, so there’s a lot of design and a lot of precision with it, and it feels good to me the same way making a really beautiful plate where everything is supposed to be. There’s a visual, immediate gratification.”

“[My son’s] rebellion is wanting fast food. On his birthday, … he wanted to go to Subway. I was like, ‘You’re kidding me – of all the places?’ But whatever, it’s what he wanted. So we played putt-putt golf and went to Subway. And he was really happy.”