Weekly intern extraordinaire Ellen Huet was dispatched to scope grand opening weekend at Mrs. Delish's in Monterey, which Special Edible the Blog recently previewed. Here's what she came back with:
The grand opening at Mrs. Delish’s was a tiny affair in many ways: as with most boutiques, the store size is on the cozy side, but what it lacks in size, it made up for in sweet-toothed intensity.The desserts of honor, carefully arranged on three-tiered display towers, go well beyond your basic flavors, including chocolate peanut butter, Oreo, coconut and double strawberry.
The storefront’s balloons brought in a steady stream of inquiring passersby, and Mrs. Delish herself and assistants were busy restocking the display and handling the customers faced with the difficult choice: which one to sample?
The chocolate coconut?
The everpopular red velvet?
The chocolate mint?
All this wasn’t enough to distract me from my epicurean conquest of the afternoon: the banana cupcake with cream cheese frosting (above). The cake hinted at banana bread while enjoying a much lighter buoyancy, and the cream cheese frosting—while sweeter than expected—was still a welcome aberration from the saccharine buttercream frosting that overdoses most.Two of my favorite things to do are going to the beach and singing in the car. This was better than singing in the car on the way to the beach.
Mrs. Delish—or, sans fictitious name, Mary Font—started the cupcakes after a stint as a P.G. stay-at-home mom and began selling them at Pacific Grove, then later, Monterey farmers markets. But the store, she says, is a new milestone. “We’re just so excited to have our own place,” she says, before excusing herself to deliver a shipment of cupcakes to the farmers market. Let them eat cake.
