The Queens Bakery Where Lidia Bastianich Became Friends With Christopher Walken

Christopher Walken is a legendary actor most famous for his roles in iconic films like "Pulp Fiction" and "Batman Returns." Lidia Bastianich is one of America's most beloved Italian chefs, renowned for her delectable culinary wisdom on everything from properly serving pasta to making perfectly textured risotto. As celebrities go, the Italian chef and the iconic actor don't have a lot in common on the surface. However, it turns out they've been friends for over half a century, all thanks to a German bakery in Queens.

The famous friendship dates back to the 1960s, when a teenage Bastianich worked at Walken's Bake Shop, a bakery owned by Walken's family in Astoria, Queens. Bastianich started out making cake boxes on the weekends, while Walken and his brothers delivered cakes and filled jelly donuts (AKA Berliners). In an interview with PBS, Bastianich praised the bakery's beautiful birthday and wedding cakes, and noted that it's where she learned to decorate baked goods. Walken, for his part, recalled that when he met Bastianich, he "didn't know she could cook," and marveled at the chef's amazing culinary career. Bastianich could say the same about Walken's acting chops — although he began acting as a child, his legendary film career didn't really take off until the 1970s, by which time Bastianich had two kids and two family restaurants of her own in Queens.

Christopher Walken's father, a baker from Germany, first opened the Ideal Bakery in Astoria in 1931. The popular neighborhood bakery went through several moves and name changes over the years, but it stayed in the Walken family until the 1980s. In addition to the elaborate wedding and birthday cakes Lidia Bastianich decorated, the German-inflected bakery offered fresh and indulgent baked goods like pfeffernüsse cookies, jelly donuts, and stollen (the fruitcake-like German holiday bread), all made with high-quality eggs and butter. Walken's Bake Shop closed in the 1980s, and the former location is now home to a hardware store, which Walken still visits on occasion.

Both Walken and Bastianich's lives have changed dramatically since they met in Walken's Bake Shop over six decades ago, but their friendship has remained strong, and they still hang out to reflect on their bakery days. The icing on the cake? Bastianich's mother also worked at Walken's. The celebrity chef convinced her mother to get a job at the bakery, and she ended up loving it so much that she stayed for 15 years. No matter how you slice it, the story of this star-crossed friendship is sweet as can be.