Comfort-food craze is just the icing on the cupcake
By Alex Neth 
| July 15, 2009 | 10:01 AM
Emma Skala, one of the owners of The Shoppe, decorates freshly baked cupcakes. (RMI photo by Werner Slocum)
What is it with the cupcakes?
Perhaps we should elaborate: how do certain foods unexpectedly find themselves part of the cultural zeitgeist?
Why are cupcakes, those frosting-shellacked relics of childhood birthdays and school parties, now hip? How can a business exist selling French fries, and hardly anything but? For lack of a better angle, where the heck does this stuff come from?
The answer, as it almost always is in these cases, is from the big metropolitan areas on either coast—but that’s too easy. Most trends, comestible and otherwise, spring from such concentrations of population. We know from where, but why?
“I think cupcakes are really individual,” said Emma Skala, who, along with Tran Wills, owns and operates East Colfax cupcakery The Shoppe. “People are looking for something special to them. When you get a full cake, you have to eat what everyone else is having.”
Cupcakes are probably the single best example of an American comfort food going runway model. Corby Kummer of The Atlantic, a writer as representative of the coastal establishment food establishment as exists, discusses them without a trace of irony; Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy character name-drops them on 30 Rock. Skala agrees that yes, while the cupcake craze began on the coasts, the fact that it’s proved to have the staying power to not only reach us here in flyover country but spawn multiple successful businesses (Yum Yum’s Delights, Big Fat Cupcake, Happy Cakes, among many others) suggests that it’s here to stay.
“Business has been awesome,” Skala said. “Better than we’d ever expected.”
Not that cupcakes are the only representative of this trend. Far from it. Sick of Dubuque Plumpers? Drop down to Biker Jim’s Gourmet Hot Dogs on the 16th Street Mall for an elk jalapeno cheddar brat. Want a locally crafted donut? Carol Lee Donut Shop & Burritos in Westminster can hook you up.
Or how about just some fries?
“It was a little weird at first,” James Rinker, general manager and consultant with Boulder’s predominantly-frites restaurant Spud Brothers, said of the initial public reception. “But we’ve been a hit. We’ve had some people who aren’t into all the carbs, but we have a lot of vegetarian options, different items, different sauces.”
This beautiful oddity of an idea didn’t escape from New York. Fries prepared in different ways are more popular around the world, and Spud Brothers’ owners — based, as they should be, out of Boise, Idaho — did their homework on food trends and quick-serve restaurants. Boulder, teeming with vegetarians, turned out to be a natural place for them to locate their business.
“People love us,” Rinker said.
So, again: why? The simplest explanation might just be that such re-imagined gourmet takes on foods like cupcakes and fries are a throwback. They are nostalgic. They are easy to eat. And considering the state of modern cuisine, where presentation and experimentation holds sway over taste — hot and cold trout roe tempura, anybody? –it’s no wonder that professionally trained chefs and bakers like Skala find themselves going back to the well of childhood for inspiration.
Inspiration, of course, also gives rise to experimentation, because The Shoppe doesn’t just do cupcakes. They also sell cereal. You can drop in at 1 a.m. on Sunday morning (!) after hitting the bars and have a bowl of Cocoa Puffs — and, in keeping with their gourmet snacking theme, slather it with one of the place’s 35 toppings.
Wills is also a co-owner of The Fabric Lab, so you can buy a pair of panties from their ETSY store featuring the motto “Don’t Be A Hater, Eat A Cupcake.” On July 4th, they sponsored a cupcake-eating challenge at nearby Rockbar, where the victor downed 24 regular-sized cupcakes (they also serve a miniature version), complete with frosting, in five minutes.
“It was pretty gross,” Skala laughed. “But really a lot of fun.”
cupcakes, food trend, french fries, spud brothers, the shoppe
