An Enviable Canteen Hides Inside a Silver Lake Recording Studio

Inside producer Emile Haynie’s studio, where hits are made over Basque cheesecake

Photographs by David Gurzhiev

The finest Basque cheesecake in town is made behind closed doors, inside a music recording studio in Silver Lake. Silky and rich with notes of burnt caramel, it’s best enjoyed with a luscious drizzle of hazelnut praliné and a spoonful of raspberry compote. Unfortunately, the delectable dessert is not available to the public. Fortunately for big-name musicians like Dua Lipa and Lana Del Rey, it’s always on hand when they stop by for a session. Flavie Denoyelle, a recent Paris transplant who runs studio operations and events for the Grammy Award-winning producer Emile Haynie, is responsible for the custardy, crustless treat. She often bakes up to five cheesecakes a week.

Talk to anyone who makes music, and they’ll tell you the recording studios they spend time in are dark, windowless rooms, not unlike restaurant kitchens. Haynie’s studio, which he acquired from a French architect a little over a year ago, is the opposite. The multi-use property comprises four distinct spaces—a listening and entertaining room, a kitchen clad in stainless steel, a courtyard that moonlights as a sculpture garden, and a carpeted skylit music studio—all cloaked in natural light, with raw floors and modern furniture. There’s a DJ booth and vinyl collection in the main room. Outside, there’s a gazebo and a Gozney pizza oven.

Emile Haynie in his studio.

Haynie loves to cook and, according to those close to him, is very good at it. “I used to have the studio at my house, and I would cook for artists all the time. It made things feel more familiar when we’d work together,” he says. “They would all say they hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in seven months, or ever, things like that.” Long before moving into his elegant work quarters, he became accustomed to combining his personal love for food and entertaining with his professional life of producing songs for chart-topping artists. “I thought it was really important to connect that here as well, even though it’s a commercial facility, and do it on a bigger level,” he adds.

A recording studio that prioritizes freshly prepared meals on-site is uncommon. Haynie only experienced it once while recording a score at the remarkable AIR Studios in London. Inside, there’s a canteen helmed by a chef who cooks high-quality, homestyle British food for the people who work there. “It’s all union string players, and they would break for lunch every single day at noon. Everyone would break bread and get to know each other. It was really cool,” he recalls.

Flavie Denoyelle, studio operations and events director (and resident baker).

In his own kitchen, that often translates to comfort foods like meatballs and chicken parm. When he started doing sessions with Lil Nas X, the rapper was ordering chicken parm from Jon & Vinny’s daily. Disheartened by the steamed state of the chicken parm after an hour in transit, Haynie felt his client deserved better. “I was like, ‘I’m going to make you a chicken parm,’ and he was like, 'There’s no chance it’s going to be better than this.’” Then Haynie presented Lil Nas X with his version—fresh out of the oven—and the young artist was swiftly persuaded.

Denoyelle met Haynie in January 2024 as he was overseeing a few renovations to the new space. “I was working in tech in New York, and I was extremely miserable. I came down here for vacation and just fell in love with the city,” says Denoyelle. “I had befriended one of Emile’s friends, Andrew Wyatt, and he was like, ‘My best friend is looking for someone to run operations and events inside his studio, do you want to meet him?’” Soon after, Denoyelle was hired, and by the time she arrived in L.A. last April, Haynie’s creative sanctuary was complete.

What Haynie didn’t know when he hired Denoyelle was that, like him, she loves to cook. Growing up in Paris, she learned how to make gâteau au yaourt from her mother and bottereaux Nantais from her grandmother. At the early age of 11, she was a contestant on MasterChef Junior in France. Later, after completing a degree in communications, she moved to New York in her early 20s, where she was excited by the restaurant scene but demoralized by the lack of home-cooked meals. “I was living with 23 people, and nobody was cooking. I was like, ‘Oh my god, what’s happening?’” Relocating to Los Angeles and working alongside Haynie was a welcome shift.

Some days, especially when the weather is nice, Haynie will stop by McCall's Meat & Fish Co. on the way into work and make lunch on the grill for the artist that’s coming in. Some nights, he’ll invite a chef into the kitchen to cater a special dinner. Oftentimes, he has his hands full in the studio, so Denoyelle will assume the culinary lead, taking care to understand each artist’s likes and dislikes and making sure there’s something good to eat, whether that’s salmon gravlax or focaccia. For example, she learned that Sia likes pasta, so she planned to impress her with homemade noodles. “It’s like a little restaurant inside the studio, but [the artists] never expect it,” she says. “It’s also a moment where you can actually talk, not be entirely in the work, and take a break. Creativity is better after that.”

More and more, they’re focused on making use of the entertainment value of Haynie’s Silver Lake compound. They’re hosting parties like a recent birthday for Lykke Li, where Alfonso Martínez of Poncho’s Tlayudas was on-site, and more intimate coffee shop-style gatherings. “It happens naturally,” says Haynie. “I like hosting, and I like when friends want to do something and bring new people.”

And, as long as Denoyelle is in the kitchen, there’s always cake. During our interview, she had a Brazilian orange-chocolate cake on deck in addition to her exceptional Basque cheesecake. “Every time there’s an artist, there’s a cake,” she says. “And if the artist comes five times during the week, it's going to be something different every day.” Lately, she’s been making a lot of cannelé, the covetable rum-dosed pastry from Bordeaux.

I tried to get Denoyelle to share her cheesecake recipe with The Angel, but she’s keeping it close to her chest—as she should. Instead, she graciously offered up her hazelnut praliné sauce, which would be dreamy over a scoop of chocolate ice cream, folded inside banana bread, or enjoyed by the spoonful.

Flavie’s Basque cheesecake with raspberry compote. Just add hazelnut praliné.

Flavie’s Hazelnut Praliné Sauce

Ingredients