When Christine Moore followed her boyfriend from Yalie to California, she got off the plane, felt the sunshine, unlike the gloomy East Coast weather she left behind, and decided never to return.
She spent the rest of her life in Southern California, ending up in Altadena, where she lived, and Pasadena, where her popular cafe and bakery, Little Flower, serves breakfast and lunch seven days a week. He would also write cookbooks, make iconic candies and marshmallows, and, with his now-closed Lincoln restaurant, spur the renewal of a block on the border of Pasadena and Altadena that today boasts a bustling food scene.
Moore, 62, died Jan. 4 of cardiac arrest caused by a cardiac arrhythmia. She is survived by her three children, Maddie, 26, Avery, 24, and Colin, 18.
Born November 6, 1963, she grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey. She began her working life as a waitress, then a restaurant and catering company manager until, to fulfill a childhood dream, she took some pastry extension classes. A tragedy in her twenties sparked her ambition: after her best friend died in a car accident, she realized how fragile life was and, with little savings, she flew to Paris. Living on bread, butter and fruit, he became a stagier or unpaid apprentice in the bakery of Gerard Mulot, master pastry chef, boulanger and chocolatier.
Returning to California, Moore soon found her way to the bakery at Campanile, the Los Angeles restaurant opened in 1989 by chefs Nancy Silverton and the late Mark Peel. While there, she joined a supper club for women who read cookbooks and made recipes. Several of those women became lifelong friends, including chef and photographer Staci Valentine, and Campanile's then-store manager, food writer Teri Gelber.
“Christine was very funny, always laughing,” Gelber said. “He wore his heart on his sleeve. He left Campanile to work at Les Deux Cafés with chef David Wynns. I went there a lot. That's where he once made asparagus ice cream, which [restaurant critic] Jonathan Gold made fun of her for years!
Moore worked at Les Deux Cafés until she was about to give birth to her first child. Wynns threw her a baby shower that consisted of a cookie exchange. Many of the city's top bakers, including Sherry Yard, Nancy Silverton and Sumi Chang, brought cookies to share. It was a sign of the affection Moore inspired among his colleagues.
At Christine Moore's baby shower held at Les Deux Cafés in Hollywood on April 18, 1999, guest of honor Moore, left, gives baker Kim Sklar one of her own “nun's breast” cookies during the shower.
(Bob Carey / Los Angeles Times)
At home with her newborn, Moore grew restless and began making candy; specifically, sea salt caramels like the ones she loved in Paris and vanilla marshmallows. He borrowed chef and radio host Evan Kleiman's kitchen and worked there in the evenings. He sold the sweets, beautifully packaged, at farmers markets.
“I remember her wrapping those damn candies in her hands, while her baby was crawling on the floor,” Gelber said.
“The first time we interviewed Christine on KCRW's 'Good Food,' her daughter Maddie was in her lap, biting her teeth with a spatula,” said KCRW President Jennifer Ferro. Moore and Ferro had babies a year apart and became supportive partners to the parents.
In 2001, Christine Moore, left, and Jennifer Ferro were photographed with their children Kobe and Maddie as the children sculpted balls of pizza dough that were then baked and presented at Evan Kleiman's former Los Angeles restaurant Angeli Caffe on Melrose.
(Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
“Christine became my business whisperer,” Ferro said. “She was a very risk-taker, constantly planning things, risking everything. I loved having her in my ear, pushing me. She was a tireless optimist about people.
“I was getting married in Hawaii in 2007 and Christine, who had a baby and a new coffee shop, insisted on coming. And making the cake… She arrived with the frozen cake layers in her suitcase. Holding three-month-old Colin under one arm, she poured icing and decorated the cake.”
Writer Victoria Patterson worked at Julienne in San Marino, where Moore was a pastry chef before opening Little Flower. “She had a booming laugh,” Patterson said. “Everyone loved her. She had a great personality, almost surprising. Very strange.”
“She followed her heart,” Gelber says. “Nothing scared her.”
Indeed. In 2007, with three young children and a crumbling marriage, she opened her dream bakery/café, Little Flower in Pasadena.
“A small café on the outskirts of town is where we gather to prepare and eat fresh, delicious food and drink strong coffee,” she wrote in her first cookbook, “Little Flower: Recipes from the Café.”
At her spacious Lincoln restaurant in Pasadena, near Altadena, Christine Moore, center, visits with customers Sarah Soifer, left, and Melissa Wu in March 2015.
(Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
“Working with Christine was one of the most intensely personal experiences I've had as an editor,” says Colleen Dunn Bates, who published the cookbook in 2012. “She had a very clear vision of how things should look. But she struggled as a writer. She read her introduction to me sobbing, convinced it was terrible. In fact, she was a great storyteller and a better writer than many cooks.”
Bates and Moore remained close friends. “She was a very emotional person in many of the best ways. She told me she cried every day. She cared a lot. Everyone was her friend.”
Christine's second book, the impressive “Little Flower Baking” (2016), had a bigger budget and a whole team, including her baker Cecilia Leung and Valentine, who took the photographs. Ten years later, the book is still selling.
In 2015, Christine opened her second cafe, Lincoln, near the Altadena-Pasadena border. In the large vaulted space of a former steel manufacturer, he created an open kitchen, a large seating area and, outside, a patio.
Although popular (often with long lines out the door), Lincoln, like many other restaurants, did not survive the pandemic. But it did spark the bevy of lively food spots today, including Ferrazzani's Pasta & Market and branches of Kismet Rotisserie, Stumptown Coffee and Home State, which occupies the space that was once Lincoln.
“When things didn't work out, Christine kept her head up and kept going,” Valentine says. “She was always planning her next adventure.”
“Christine was constantly learning, expanding and trying things,” Valentine added. “She inspired everyone.”
Moore was all about community. He did book pitches for novelists and cookbook writers, and once offered to do it for this writer.
In September 2015, at the LA Times' “The Taste” event held at the Paramount Pictures studios, Christine Moore, second from right, participated in a panel called “Things in a Bowl,” moderated by the late Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold, with, from left, chefs Alvin Cailan and Minh Phan.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
“She was close to a lot of girls in our neighborhood,” Avery said. “They called her their Fairy Godmother.”
“And he took note of all the kids who were going to college,” Maddie said. “And she sent them packages from Little Flower: a t-shirt, a backpack, cookies, candy, marshmallows. She knew what it was like to be alone for the first time, so her Fairy Godmother gave them this beautiful box.”
A year ago, when fires hit Altadena, Moore and her son, Colin, bypassed police lines to return home with garden hoses. They battled the flames and embers to save it and several other structures.
“It was very traumatic,” Colin said. “A front row seat to all the horror. It took a toll on mom's mental health. She fought back.”
The house survived, but Moore had not yet returned home.
As a businesswoman, single mother, and highly sensitive person, Moore survived in life through an excess of loving kindness.
“Mom was a very public person,” Avery said, “but we got to see her behind closed doors: the tender, loving, generous, brilliant lady she always was and always will be.”
“We knew her as our mom, our best friend, our refuge, our person,” Maddie said.
“Being raised by a single mother, everything could go either way,” Avery added. “But she really worked hard, never looked back, sent us to amazing schools and never complained. It wasn't an easy road, but she just did it, she did it with such ease and grace and she loved us so fiercely. She was the tree of giving, she is the tree of giving. She instilled that in every person she met.”
Two nights after Moore's death, his good friends and children sat around the table and talked. They said that their mother and friend was the person you always called, who gave you the best advice, who you wanted on your side, and that she was always on your side. Everyone present said that Christine was their best friend.
“She had that spark every time she walked into the room,” Colin said.
And their hugs were famous. “She gives you a hug and before long,” Bates said, “you're talking about a very deep topic.”
Upon hearing that line, Moore's daughter Avery laughed and said, “She wasn't that superficial—it wasn't small talk, she always got right to the point!
“My mom was unapologetically herself,” Avery continued. “No matter the situation, she trusted her guts and her instincts… I feel like being raised by a force of nature will be the greatest gift of our lives.”
