Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Open Open Open

Remember that old Mervyn's commercial? The one where the crazy lady gets to the store long before it opens and chants, "Open, open, open!" whilst sticking her face and hands up against the glass?

I often feel this way when I see new storefronts going up. Here are two current targets of my "open open open" chanting:

PICCOMOLO ITALIAN ICE CREAM
After our Marukai run on Sunday, we walked to cé fiore for yogurt. On our way there, we spied bright orange signs heralding the imminent arrival of Piccomolo Italian Ice Cream. Whee! A new contestant in the Battle of the Frozen Treats!
Fat-free yogurt, this is not. Piccomolo is marginally better for you than Cold Stone Creamery or Baskin-Robbins, but it's not exactly diet-friendly. Bah! I plan to throw caution to the wind when Piccomolo finally comes to town. It will be a nice creamy change of pace. With over 30 flavors, it will surely take me a long time to sample all this gelato! According to its website, Piccomolo's gelato is "made fresh in store everyday with all natural ingredients" and does not contain "butter fat, heavy cream, or egg product." Piccomolo also offers gelato cakes, "made with delicious gelato and freshly baked sheet cake."

Piccomolo currently has locations in Encino, Old Town Pasadena, and Pacific Palisades. Sadly, I don't know when exactly the Little Tokyo shop will open. I guess we will have to keep walking past it and cross our fingers that it's soon!

VANILLA BAKE SHOP
According to promotional copy, the treats at Santa Monica's Vanilla Bake Shop will be "inspired by the desserts [Amy Berman's] mother made when she was younger." The shop will feature cakes and cupcakes in flavors like vanilla bean, red velvet, spicy carrot, banana chocolate chip, toasted coconut, and strawberries and cream. The shop will also sell "old-fashioned icebox treats." I'm not really sure what these are, but I'm eager to try! [UPDATE: I now know that an icebox dessert is one that must sit a few hours in the fridge before it's done. You can see Martha's take here.]
In addition, Vanilla Bake Shop will offer full-service catering for weddings and special events. If their goods are even remotely as cute as their nascent website, I will be very excited to try this place! I'm a sucker for good packaging. Vanilla Bake Shop's grand opening is next Tuesday, July 10.

Open, open, open!

11 comments:

  1. Brent stumbled across the Vanilla website over the weekend, and when I saw that the open date is my BIRTHDAY I took it as a good sign. I'm excited to try it!

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  2. Re: Vanilla Bakeshop, Amy made my wedding cake (meyer lemon cake with lemon mousse and fresh rasberries, covered in vanilla buttercream) and we've had her mini-desserts a few times (love the dirt-cake). All were YUM!

    Keep up the good work on your blog.

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  3. whee! looks delish...both of them. i can't wait until vanilla opens. sounds like i'll have to run over there during lunch for sure.

    susiecakes also sells icebox desserts. i, too, aren't really sure what they are and am too lazy to check the magical google.

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  4. Oh my gosh! The Vanilla Bake Shop sounds so amazing! I love the pink and brown too! Can't wait to try it :)

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  5. AWESOME! We don't have any of these fancy icecream places in New England! We just got the first few Cold Stones in the past two years!

    We do have a lot of nice homemade dairy-farm-turned-Icecream-paradise places though!

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  6. When you come over will you bring me treaties?

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  7. Holy smokes, those sound delish! You'll have to give me a full review, which I have no doubt that you will, so I know if I should try them. Now I'm going to go get a cupcake.

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  8. Girl we should hang out, those are the kinds of things I like!. I heard about the Vanilla shop and drooled. I even love the name!

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  9. Its a very good thing I'm on the East coast because I'd be a heffer if i lived within 10 miles of that Vanilla place! Happy 4th :)

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  10. oooh, we drove by vanilla that day we GTG for tea. i was drooling just looking at the pretty pink & brown sign.

    i love that you always bring us news about all the fun, yummy stuff coming soon.

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  11. See, I knew I moved to Encino for a REASON!

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