The Kellogg’s NYC cafe is about to become a full-time stoner food paradise. A few weeks ago, the cereal restaurant transformed into a three-week Pop-Tarts Cafe pop-up, with wacky items like nachos and burritos made out of Pop-Tarts. It was such a success that Kellogg’s is permanently adding nutty, sugar-bomb food like Eggo sandwiches with toasted marshmallows and chocolate and Pop-Tart milkshakes to the menu.
The cafe will also offer different specials each month, starting with New York-themed food like a hot dog. But as with the Pop-Tarts pop-up, all things that sound savory will actually be sweet. Instead of meat, the hot dog sausage is made out of Cocoa Krispies, crushed vanilla latte-flavored Pop-Tarts, and marshmallow. It’s then tucked into a bowtie doughnut bun and topped with vanilla-flavored yellow frosting that looks like mustard and green apple-flavored gummy bears that look like relish.
“What we realized with Pop-Tart Cafe was that people are looking for something that’s more out of the box than what we were doing,” says restaurant partner Sandra Di Capua. “People are playing with the food more and more. It’s something we had fun with.”
It’s a marked change for the restaurant, which opened last summer with a menu largely consisting of cereal bowls designed by Milk Bar chef Christina Tosi. Starting Tuesday, the menu from Di Capua and co-partner Anthony Rudolf will boast more of the crazy items than the cereal bowls.
Other permanent menu items include $2 doughnuts made out of cereal; $11 sandwiches with Eggo bread and fillings like toasted marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate; and $13 milkshakes with Pop-Tarts, labeled as “breakfast on the run.” The “Dem Cookies, Dough” milkshake — the most popular item from the Pop-Tart pop-up — has chocolate chip cookie dough Pop-Tart, vanilla ice cream, cookie dough, milk, whipped cream, and chocolate drizzle.
The Pop-Tart pop-up cafe drew long lines and popularity that the cereal cafe never did. Between 1,000 and 1,500 people visited per day the first week it was open. The crowds and long lines died down slightly in the last two weeks, but it’s also fared far better on everyone’s favorite natural marketing tool, Instagram, than the cereal bowls did.
Di Capua credits the popularity of the cafe to a cult following behind Pop-Tarts, as well as the outlandishness of the dishes and the temporary nature of the items. To keep it going, the new dishes are just as crazy as the ones from the pop-up cafe, and they’re trying to capture the “impermanence” of the pop-up by changing the menu every month. After this month’s New York theme, the cafe plans to introduce items inspired by Asian food, Italian food, or classic Jewish restaurant dishes.
Pop-Tart milkshakes and s’mores sandwiches for breakfast might only seem fit for a child or a really stoned adult, but Di Capua insists that a whole range of ages stopped by the Pop-Tarts cafe. People who don’t want a sugar bomb can also order a plain Eggos or one of the less sweet bowls of cereal, she adds. Besides, most of the people who come to the Times Square cafe are tourists, or New Yorkers who are visiting on the weekend as a treat. Sugar intake is not on the mind.
“For them, there are not so many rules,” she says.
Check out the debut menu for the new version for the Kellogg’s cafe below.
Kellogg's NYC menu — March 2017 by Eater NY on Scribd