The Best Cakes on the Block

On a stretch of South Fairfax Avenue dotted by Ethiopian restaurants and thrift stores stands a cake maker that has been catering to Hollywood’s A-list for nearly 60 years.

Hansen’s Cakes has produced thousands of elaborate concoctions, from two-story wedding cakes dressed in butter cream and Grand Marnier frosting to specialty birthday cakes made for the likes of John Wayne, Bob Hope and Johnny Carson.

But five years ago, another cake maker came to Fairfax Avenue -- not just down the street, not just next door, but jammed into a storefront between Hansen’s bakery and showroom.

Regal Cake Gallery quickly emerged as a formidable competitor.

The arrangement puzzles and amuses those who come across the battling bakeries. With Regal’s display window full of cakes, surrounded on both sides by display windows filled with Hansen’s treats, customers often walk into one shop thinking it’s the other.

Competition between the businesses has gone well beyond who bakes the best cake.

There have been accusations of recipe thieving, chef pirating and sign trickery; claims that one baker secretly called health inspectors out to the other; even a clash over the display of R-rated cake designs. Both bakers say they are trying to achieve detente -- but admit it’s hard.

“The employees between the two shops have a good relationship; we speak to each other,” said Jennifer Center, a sales clerk at Regal. “But there’s institutional tension between the two. How can you have a good relationship with your competitor?”

The rivalry belies the sugary happiness that both shops exude. Each bakery is filled with cakes of all shapes and sizes -- a champagne bottle with an edible ice bucket, a soccer ball resting on a field of green frosting. A cake castle stands 5 feet tall, with sugar-encrusted spires and a cream ivy overhang.

Kirk Rossberg, president of the California Retail Bakers Assn. and a former Hansen’s employee, says the side-by-side-by-side competition is the talk of Los Angeles baking circles, especially because Regal and Hansen’s are among only a dozen or so high-end specialty cake shops in Southern California.

“It’s gutsy, and pretty bizarre,” Rossberg said of Regal. “It’s a little surprising to go up against somebody that is strong and has such a well-known cake.”

And therein hangs a tale.

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At Hansen’s, baking cakes is a tradition that family members say dates to 16th century Scandinavia.

Holger “Bud” Hansen arrived in California in the 1930s and set up shop near Farmers Market, moving to South Fairfax between Pico and Olympic boulevards after World War II. In its early days, Hansen’s baked everything: bread, rolls, pastries, cookies and danishes. But competition was tough, and Bud Hansen decided to focus on cakes.

After eating many prop wedding cakes that Hansen’s baked for movie studios, celebrities began ordering the real thing.

Today, hundreds of autographed glossy head shots line the cake shop’s walls.

Bud Hansen’s son, Gary, joined the business just as it was establishing its Hollywood clientele.

In the early 1960s, Gary Hansen got an order to deliver a birthday cake to John Wayne’s boat in Newport Harbor. When he arrived, the boat was offshore. Hansen rented a rowboat, paddled out and banged on the hull.

“What the hell is that racket?” he heard Wayne say.

Hansen -- sweat-soaked, with birthday cake in hand -- waited as Wayne came to the rail. The movie star invited him aboard and shared a beer with him, Hansen said, and they talked for more than an hour.

“John Wayne became a [regular] customer,” Hansen said.

One cake that became a Hansen’s legend went to the Playboy Mansion in 1965. The organizers of a party requested that its top tier accommodate the ample dimensions of a model, who would leap out, Gary Hansen recalled.

She test-jumped. She got stuck. Someone had underestimated.

Hansen’s chefs rebuilt the top layer of the cake, larger this time, in just two hours.

For the celebration of Bob Hope’s 50th anniversary with NBC in 1986, Hansen’s built a 25-layer, two-story cake that required a crane and four workers to assemble on-site. The cake cost $18,000 and fed 2,800 people.

By that time, Hansen’s had expanded its operation, but in an unusual way. In 1983, the only space available was two storefronts away -- a Chinese restaurant was in between. Real estate in the area was scarce, so Hansen’s snatched up the vacant store.

Today, Gary’s son Patrick, 41, oversees 27 employees producing nearly 100 cakes a day. He says the secret to their success is a patented cake mix -- a concoction of several hundred ingredients known only to people whose last name is Hansen.

A few degrees’ variance in room temperature can send a batch of batter into the garbage. Refrigerator humidity must be perfect.

Patrick places his cake pans on a composite used for the heat shield on the Apollo space capsule. It costs more than $100,000, but Hansen says he can taste the difference.

Through the 1990s, Hansen’s business continued to grow, and eventually the shop added showrooms in Beverly Hills and Tarzana. One day, Hansen’s got word that the restaurant standing between its Fairfax showroom and bakery was about to shut down after an unsuccessful run as an Ethiopian eatery. The family set its sights on leasing the property and finally uniting its operation.

But then entered Rosa Leung.

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Compared to the Hansens, Leung is new to the cake business. After immigrating to California from Taiwan in 1979, the slight, bespectacled woman worked as an accountant and ran an import-export business that handled zippers, electrical motors and other steel products.

But she was always interested in food. She was a nutritionist by training, and her father worked in the sugar industry.

Tired from the grind of her export business, she had an idea one day: wedding cakes.

“A happy business,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons I jumped in.”

In 1995, she and her husband bought Regal Cake Gallery, a then-44-year-old bakery in Canoga Park. Within a year, Leung said, she heard that Hansen’s might be interested in selling its business on Fairfax. She spotted the vacant storefront between Hansen’s bakery and showroom and leased it, anticipating, she said, that she would eventually own Hansen’s and simply knock out the walls.

The Hansens dispute her story, saying it was Leung who approached them and offered to buy the business. They said that there was a bidding war for the vacant space and that Leung ultimately made the better offer.

So in January 1999, she opened her second Regal Cake Gallery -- right in the middle of Hansen’s Cakes. And she catered to the same Hollywood clientele that made Hansen’s famous.

Regal made birthday cakes for Bill Clinton and Tipper Gore as well as a going-away cake for George Clooney when he left “ER.”

For the movie “American Wedding,” Regal made nine five-tiered cakes used in the banquet scene. Customers who had seen the movie have asked for the same cake so many times that Regal includes it in its catalog, priced at $1,000.

In her kitchen, Leung demonstrates her deft touch with a sculpting knife, smoothing the icing on a cake fashioned like a wedding gown.

She compares it to writing Chinese calligraphy. “Your emotion is in the brush stroke, the speed, the energy.”

It took her only a few sessions in the kitchen to know that the cake business was for her.

“Cakes are associated with warm, happy emotions.”

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For their part, the Hansens said they were outraged when Leung decided to open shop in the middle of their business.

The family learned from a lawyer that there was nothing they could do.

“I was surprised, unhappy, kind of shocked,” Patrick Hansen said. “But this is the American way.”

Leung says she tries to keep the rivalry out of her mind and to focus on baking the best cake.

“If you have good skill, good quality, good products and good service, that’s all you need for business,” she said. “If people like my cakes, they will come to me.”

Relationships between the two were rocky from the start.

A pastry chef left Hansen’s after 16 years on the job. A month later, he started at Regal.

“She went after our ex-employees,” Gary Hansen said. Leung insists that the chef approached her -- and only after leaving Hansen’s. She even made him sign an affidavit saying he initiated contact.

Then, Los Angeles County health inspectors made a surprise visit to Regal. Leung said the inspectors told her that someone made an anonymous complaint against the bakery. The Hansens deny they had anything to do with it.

The Hansens accuse Leung of sending her family members into their bakery to try free samples, so she could figure out what ingredients they were using.

Leung laughs off the charge: “There are other Asian people, not just me.”

One time, Hansen put a sign on the sidewalk pointing to his bakery.

Leung countered with a sign of her own.

The Los Angeles Department of Public Works arrived, she says, and told her that her sign was obstructing the sidewalk.

“What about their sign?” she said she asked. She turned to point -- and discovered that the Hansen’s sign was no longer there.

Patrick Hansen denies setting her up.

A few years later, he told Leung that he wanted to install an awning over his storefront and asked her to sign papers giving her approval.

She said that it would have blocked her Regal sign and that she threw the papers away.

Hansen put up the awning anyway. “I didn’t hear from her,” he said, “so I didn’t think it was a problem.”

Leung said she suffered the awning for nearly a year, and finally called City Hall.

The awning came down.

Controversy resurfaced when Regal purchased another bakery, Exotic Cakes of West Hollywood, and placed some adult-themed cakes in the window display on Fairfax. One of the cakes was in the shape of a woman’s bosoms covered in pink frosting to resemble a bikini. The cake was on a pedestal that accidentally tipped over, pressing it against the window in a manner that had passersby aghast. Leung said she didn’t notice, but Patrick Hansen did.

“The neighborhood association got really upset,” said Hansen, whose bakery also makes adult-oriented cakes but keeps the designs in a red binder. “They came in and talked to us, and my dad said, ‘Hey, it’s them, not us.’ ”

Leung moved the display cake inside their showroom. Regal later returned the cake to the outside display, this time mounted on a reinforced stand and placed several shelves higher.

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While not exactly light and sweet, the relationship between Hansen’s and Regal has improved, although the owners won’t go beyond a nod and “good morning” if they happen to meet.

“Sure, I’ll say, ‘Hi, how are you doing, just fine,’ ... small talk,” Leung said. Patrick Hansen said things had been less hostile since the 2000 retirement of his father, Gary.

“I think my dad may hold a grudge, just a little,” Patrick said. “He’s not happy with the way everything went down.”

But both stores said the competition ultimately improved each of their businesses.

“When Regal bought it, we started to clean up our bakeries, repainted, got the cobwebs out of our windows and opened up a bigger showroom,” Patrick Hansen said.

Leung said the competition pushed her to conjure up new designs. One recent creation is a four-layer cake fashioned like Tiffany gift boxes.

Regal and Hansen’s hope that a revitalization project planned for Little Ethiopia later this year will bring even more business.

But the competing bakeries continue to astound and confuse customers.

Kimberly Marable, who was recently introduced to Hansen’s Cakes, said she just assumed the three storefronts were one business until someone pointed out the competitors.

“If they’re both getting business, there’s room for opportunity for everyone,” said Marable, who walked out of Hansen’s with a 9-inch French vanilla cake with chocolate frosting for her son’s birthday.

Marable said she loved Hansen’s cakes but might well try one from Regal.

Tamara Valdry, a dance teacher from Baldwin Hills, has been a loyal Hansen’s Cakes customer for nearly 30 years.

On a recent afternoon, Valdry walked down Fairfax toward Hansen’s and saw Regal’s burgundy sign. She had never noticed the other bakery there before. Drawn by the floral baskets in their display window, she wandered in.

For the first time since she was 12, Valdry bought a cake from someone other than Hansen’s -- a lemon-raspberry Regal birthday cake for her pastor.

As she walked out, she saw Hansen’s to her left.

And she saw Hansen’s to her right.

“This is amazing,” Valdry said. “It’s so hard to find a good bakery in Los Angeles, and for this to be smack dab in the middle, it doesn’t make sense almost.”