Baking hot
Michael Heath
Acouple of years ago I was in New York with my arm candy, plus friends and offspring, checking out the Chelsea area and SoHo with its hip residents, rats and meat-packing outlets now converted into eating establishments for people who live in converted lofts. We were watching New Yorkers mooch about the boutiques (boutiques is not a word we use over here any more, is it?) crammed with geegaws of all kinds, when we couldn’t help but notice a mob moving towards Bleecker Street. Most of the crowd were chatting excitedly and licking their lips, but some were silent, strolling and rolling their eyes. All moved as if in a trance. By now I’d become tired of counting the rats who, by the way, are not at all like British rats. Oh no, New York rats have street cred and wear low-cut jeans, if female, with ankle socks and high heels. They’re in the media, property, and you can see them on the subway, laughing at cartoons in the New Yorker, roller-blading around the city that never sleeps. (That’s not strictly true; New York goes to bed quite early.) We wished the rats farewell and tagged along with this madding crowd only to find ourselves at the end of a long, orderly queue which turned out to be for a bakery. Not any old bakery, you understand, but the Magnolia bakery (Bleecker Street, West Village). Here, if you bribed the doorman, you could sit and gorge yourself on a pot of tea and cupcakes. No ordinary cupcakes but super-duper cupcakes that have taken New York by storm and were selling like, er ... cupcakes! They are served by what I took to be ex-female prison warders, but without the charm. These ladies had reintroduced cupcakes to the Americans and they couldn’t get enough. We were only allotted ten minutes to scoff and get out, but the phenomenon had left its mark on my arm candy and her friend. If this cupcake business was so hot in New York, what about introducing the same goodies to flavour-starved Londoners? And so came about the Primrose Bakery (Tel: 07802 275205) or email marthaswift@ dsl.pipex.com or go to Selfridges and you can indulge yourself in toothsome cupcakes similar to the ones that rock New York. The only problem is that I’m now, dear reader, a cupcake widower because the demand is so great that Martha and Lisa, who run the bakery, work from dawn to dusk. But at least they are no longer frantic with ennui.
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