Have you tried Georgetown Cupcake yet? The name is singular, which is funny because they have approximately 80 billion cupcakes for sale. I went over there yesterday to get some celebratory vegan treats for my friend The Insufferable Vegan and failed…
It had just started to rain in Los Angeles, and if you’ve never experienced what it’s like to drive here during even the lightest of sprinkles, imagine everyone on the road white-knuckling the steering wheel and screaming bloody murder at the top of their lungs and you’re not too far off.
I walked in to the beautiful new shoppe on Robertson just south of West Third and looked in wonderment at the sea of attractive cupcakes before me. It looked good, it smelled good, but the people milling around looked shell-shocked somehow, which I attributed to the harrowing driving conditions.
I was a wee bit disappointed to have my internet research confirmed — there was only one flavor of vegan cupcake available, cranberry spice. Hey, one is all I need… one is infinitely better than none! So I tried to order some, and the nice woman at the register told me they were out of vegan frosting. Out of frosting? The cake is just a conduit for the frosting! But there’s at least seven frosted ones on display– what about them? “Trust me,” she said, “you do not want to eat those.” I did not want dry cakes either.
I turned to my trusty omni companion to let him order and he said he didn’t even want anything. What?! He is a grown man who subsists on a steady diet of Oreos and soda and it was his idea to seek this place out! He took another look around, “Do you have iced tea?” She said yes and I interrupted to ask if there was a restroom. The same nice young lady looked at me as though she had had the longest hardest day at Folsom Prison Day Care and I was asking her to read me yet another story and said, “Yes, but only the men’s is working right now.” “Wow, you guys are having a rough day!” She agreed, looking in need of a chair and a hug.
Upon my return from the loo I found my omni at the condiment bar and in his hands were a little white bag and a cup of iced tea … “They’re out of ice.”
A woman in an apron approached us and said, “V squared?” and handed us a pink box. If you’re confused, it’s because it was confusing. ‘V squared’ is a double vanilla cupcake, but he had only ordered one, and he already had it. She shrugged and walked away. We looked around at the other customer-refugees to see who they might rightfully belong to, but all we got were pleading looks, so we fled. I realize now we should have taken them with us.
We made it back to the car, opened up the little white bag, and pulled out a cupcake … that was not the one he had ordered. And inside the box were two more cupcakes, frosting sliding off the cakes like an avalanche in Candy Land in winter.
Running a business is hard. Really really hard. Running a business during the holidays? Madness! The kind of insanity where a fancy cupcake store is reduced to selling frosting-free cupcakes, iceless iced tea, something horrible has happened in the WC, and they get customers’ orders wrong three different ways. I have worked holiday retail, and I empathize with anyone currently doing so. So I guess I’ll have to try for my vegan cupcake and cold beverage again some day that’s no where near February 14th. Maybe I’ll call ahead. Congratulations, Insufferable Vegan?!
Have you successfully tried their vegan offerings? Please do comment and let me know what I missed!
