Red, yes; velvety, no
(Credit: Jiyeon Yoo)
To announce its arrival—and ingratiate itself to the neighbors—Crumbs gave out 1,000 cupcakes gratis, on its first Thursday at eight in the freakin’ morning. The thought of a breakfast cupcake made us want to hurl, but a freebie is a freebie, so we gamely got our booties out to little Santa Monica Blvd., expecting a flash mob of the cupcake-obsessed. To our slight disappointment, we didn’t see a queue of rival sororities in gang Juicy Couture colors (although over 150 free cupcakes were already handed out by 10 a.m.), but we did chat up co-founder Jason Bauer, who flew out from New York for the opening, and his brother Harley who played the part of hottie West Coast operations manager in a totally-rad Journey T-shirt. We picked up a fair cross-sampling of the behemoth cakes and went looking for a gigantic jug of ice-cold milk. Here’s what we tasted:
Red velvet: Please, is there a bake shop out there that won’t say that red velvet is their most popular? Jason Bauer reminded us of the Waldorf-Astoria urban legend and suggested that their red velvet leans more metropolitan-hotelier and less “Steel Magnolias.” No offense to the Waldorf, but we think we prefer our red velvet more velvety. The cake was dry—odd, considering that there was hardly any discernible cocoa powder in it. Bauer also informed us that Crumbs distinguishes itself from other cake shops by topping most of their cakes with cream cheese frosting. But we encountered a cloying, slightly waxy finish that seemed suspiciously like a shortening composite.
Chocolate: Anything that we sampled with a chocolate cake was fair—not spectacularly rich in chocolate flavor or moist in texture, but not offensively dry or bland either (weigh that with its $3.75 tag). Of the group, we favored the Blackout: its chocolate frosting was vastly improved with a thin layer of chocolate ganache and a coat of cake crumbs. The Oreo, strangely enough, featured the most pronounced cream cheese in the frosting. We didn’t get it, either.
Artie Lange: This cupcake does indeed “have it all": white cake—as hyper-sugary as the rest but moist and relatively flavorful—filled with chocolate frosting, topped with vanilla frosting and a chocolate ganache cap, then finished with chocolate and vanilla jimmies. It’s an atomic bomb of diabetes to your soul; but given that it’s named after the dude on the Howard Stern Show and a portion of the proceeds go to LifeBeat, an AIDS/HIV youth awareness program, this might as well be the way to test your pancreatic mettle.
Verdict: Crumbs is open from 8 a.m.-10 p.m. practically every day (until 11 p.m. Friday-Saturday)—those assiduous New Yorkers sure like to get their sugar shock at all hours!—and who couldn't use those extra hours to grab a last minute birthday dozen? In case you’re too squeamish to attempt a breakfast cupcake, Crumbs also offers a selection of morning pastries sans the icky-sweet frosting.
Jiyeon Yoo is Restaurants editor for Metromix Los Angeles.
