[Photos: @ericripert / Twitter, @hazelsy / Instagram, Eater National, Photoshop: Jasmin Sun / Eater National]
While there have been many non-pastry-related world happenings this week, the food people of New York City and the rest of the country are currently enraptured by the cronut, Dominique Ansel Bakery's vanilla cream-filled croissant-doughnut crossbreed. The line to get one of these sugary hybrids reportedly starts as early as 6 a.m., which understandably is just way too early for some people. So the business-minded folks of Craigslist gave the world cronut scalping. This incidentally helped greatly in kicking off this week's utterly uncontrollable smattering of in-your-face cronutness currently in every nook and cranny of the Internet. Here are some highlights:
Eric Ripert Eats a Cronut
Today Le Bernardin chef man Eric Ripert freaked out everyone in food media and live-tweeted (rather sexy?) images of himself eating a cronut. In seven tweets, he illustrates his internal struggle as he decides to eat one of, and then all of, what is presumably a full box of cronuts:
This is THE CRONUT!!! twitter.com/ericripert/sta?
— Eric Ripert (@ericripert) May 31, 2013
For shots of all the tweets, head over to Eater NY.
Cronut Scalping and Limited Quantities
As competition grows among Craigslist cronut scalpers, The Bad Deal writer and Bloomberg food critic Ryan Sutton reports today that prices for scalped cronuts have gotten cheaper despite the max cronut buying limit being cut from six to three. Last weekend, getting a cronut delivered in Manhattan would run you $20 (that's 635% above retail). The lowest price available now is $10 per pastry, which kind of seems like a steal? Especially since it means not having to wake up early to stand in line.
Dominique Ansel Weighs In
[Photo: Eater.com]
Yesterday Eater National chatted with chef Dominique Ansel about Cronut Mania. He discussed the inspiration behind the pastry, that time someone flipped off one of his baristas, that other time someone cried, and turning cronut into Cronut™:
A New Flavor Launches Tomorrow
Have no fear, vanilla-hating cronut lovers, there's a new flavor now, and it's just as cronutty. Starting tomorrow, Dominique Ansel Bakery will begin serving lemon-maple-glazed cronuts instead of the current rose-vanilla. According to Grub Street, It will be filled with a "very light" cream made with fresh zest, and rolled in maple sugar once it's out of the fryer.
Advice on Scaling the Cronut Business
Despite the cronut's widespread success, Ansel refuses to raise prices for the pastry above its original $5, although he is reportedly working on increasing production. "These are the wrong moves," says New York Magazine writer Kevin Roose. In his recent op-ed column, he explains various ways Ansel could and should ride the cronut wave to expand his business globally, from striking a deal with Starbucks to actually charging more for his cronuts.
The Week in Cronut Reviews
It turns out that there actually are people out there that don't like the cronut. New York Daily News reporter Justin Silverman is one of them. He finds them to be "too sweet," "sugar bombs of sweetness," actually, and that they don't taste "much different from a run-of-the-mill éclair."
More Hybrid Foods
After pondering the issue of the cronut, Bon Appetit writer Jason Kessler decides to introduce seven new hybrid foods that the magazine's test kitchen has created (or maybe not really?) for the summer. They are Porckles (pulled pork-filled dill pickles), Brrr-itos (Sweet cinnamon crepes filled with ice cream and toppings, then rolled like a burrito), Craquin Jack (quinoa clusters covered in molasses), Muschup (mustard-ketchup mix), PusaBuns (American cheese-stuffed corn tortillas to be used as buns), Brones (brownie ice cream cones) and Cron Dogs (cronut-wrapped hot dog).
· All Dominique Ansel Bakery Coverage on Eater [-E-]
· All Cronut Coverage on Eater [-E-]