She recently visited more in Chicago, "an intimate boutique infused with luscious materials and creamy light which abstract the pure ingredients and flavors found in their couture cupcakes."
Here is her report:
After our visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art we took the girls to more cupcakes because it was less than a mile away from the museum. After seeing the fancy-schmancy postcard and creative description, I had to give it a try! Our field trip theme was: everything is designed, so I tried to point out the lighting features to the girls.
They completely ignored me as they studied the shelves of cupcakes for their choices.
I have to say this, it's not designed for short people—then again we eliminated the bacon-maple cupcake on the higher shelf from our choices pretty quickly anyway. 6'3" Paul was caught by the Guinness-flavored cupcake at his eye level. The girls selected more conventional flavors. We had six of them packed and brought them home.
As a related aside, the other night we were watching Food Detectives hosted by Ted Allen on the Science Network. They did an experiment to test if food presentation affects taste and enjoyment. The hypothesis was that expectations affect the experience.
So they staged this experiment at a restaurant in New York and showed it in action. They bought food from a food warehouse: green salad, breaded fish fillets, green beans, a prepared sliced potato side dish, a light red wine, and chocolate layer cake.
They did a dinner seating with a group of people where they served everything on paper plates and plastic dinnerware. The plating looked like what you would do at home. The menu named everything straightforwardly: fish, green beans, etc.
Then they did another seating where they dressed up the presentation with garnishes, used china and cloth, and gave everything fancy names. The fish became "Panko-encrusted St. Peter's fish with fresh herbs" (we got a chuckle out of St. Peter's fish, had to have been thought up by a Catholic in the group!)
The comments from the taste testers were funny. Not surprisingly, the ratings were much, much higher with the fancier presentation of the same ordinary food. The guy who arranged this experiment claims that the most important part was the names of the food, which sets up an expectation for something better and improves the perceived taste of the food.
So there you have it.
Our assessment of the more cupcakes follows suit. They were good, certainly a world apart from what is available at the local grocery store. The clerks were very nice and the store had a warm feeling from the lighting and the aroma of baking cake. Was it worth the hype and the $3 per cupcake? I suppose so. I would send a cupcake-craving soul there for a satisfying experience.
Thanks to Kathy for the great post and architecture firm David Woodhouse for providing the images. All images by Christopher Barrett; used with permission.
