Patisserie Bluejay in Arcadia Is Bringing a Tech Startup Mentality to Cake | Eater LA

"Tucked into a dusty Arcadia strip mall anchored by a 99-cent store, I discovered Patisserie Bluejay, the tiny bakery opened in February 2023 by pastry chef Jay Chen and her software-engineer husband, Ivan Lo. One of the most intriguing features on their website is the “cake picker,” a sparse flowchart PNG that helps customers choose from the shop’s three dozen or so options by sorting cakes into three flavor buckets—pure chocolate, pure fruit, or pure cheesecake—and asking taste and texture questions until it narrows to a single recommended cake. Inside, the corner shop’s pale yellow walls, tile flooring, and wood-trimmed pastry case filled with cookies, cream puffs, and canelés belie a rigorous, tech-infused approach: Chen’s understated, meticulous layer cakes fuse French technique with Asian flavor mashups and often taste lighter than they look, more like a firm English trifle because mousse is interspersed with a Bavarian cream that mimics sponge cake to create deliberate micro-contrast in each bite. The couple treats recipe development like product design—dedicating an R&D day, versioning recipes in a notebook or “repository,” baking multiple prototypes, inviting customer collaboration, and even sharing failed experiments on social media. That process produced a stable pear-and-Moscato cake after iterations that moved from sparkling Moscato to pinot grigio and finally to a version with pinot grigio in the gelée and pears sous vide in white wine, and it drove a separate tom yum goong–inspired cake through four versions as they balanced lemongrass, lime, and apple elements. Their brainstorming ranges from white sesame with an Italian tiramisu to dark chocolate paired with wasabi, and with a running list of 100 ideas (only about a third attempted so far) they embrace imperfections, prioritize craft over short-term profit, and aim to create lasting memories—especially for birthdays." - Cathy Chaplin