Chestnut Diner Restaurant, that strikingly unpopular pizza joint on 41st and Chestnut, will deliver gigantic, oddly flavored cupcakes to your door until 3am.
Occupying the building that was formerly College Pizza, Chestnut Diner Restaurant is clearly an attempt to differentiate from the 20 other pizza and hoagie shops in my hood. It worked: while the tri-fold paper menu is a leftover from CDR's previsous incarnation, the upgrade to orange, dim lighting and green pleather booths was a smart one. Chestnut Diner Restaurant has decent food, pleasant atmosphere, and more importantly, cupmakes.
The cupmakes [they are spelled cupmakes on the menu. Typo or trademark, I'm not sure] are not exactly good. They are something more complex than good. Cupmakes are probably exactly what you wanted. Huge amounts of baked and whipped fat and sugar and probably a few chemicals that you couln't pronoune. They are the baked good equivalent of a Dairy Queen Blizzard.
I've had the pleasure of dining on the Slammin' Samoa, the Classic Chocolate, and the Peanut Butter x3 both at the restaurant and in the comfort of my own home. The cupmakes get added to the list of cheap, a la carte food oddities that West Philly has to offer. The quintesential punk rock West Philly experience is now a tofu hoagie from Fu Wah, a samosa from Internatioal Foods, and a cupmake from the Chestnut Diner Restaurant.
I rarely see anyone inside the Chestnut Diner Restaurant, and it makes me very sad. Undoubtedly, it is owned by hard working immigrants who [not unlike my father and uncle] sunk their entire life savings into a secondhand pizza oven, endured divorce and health department violations so that they could avoid the humiliation of a boss who cheats them because they say their p's like b's. One block away is the hip multi-story neon light atrocity that boasts a famous chef multi-story food. It will inevitably propagate more of its kind, and the fate of the Chestnut Diner is anything but certain.
So, do your part for humanity and the entreprenuerial class of West Philadelphia. Order a cupmake. Since you might have a hard time tracking them down on the internet, here is the number and the cupcake selection:
215-386-6000, or order online at www.grubhub.com
- Peanut Butter x3-with reeses cups!
- Rainbow Classic-sprinkles and m&ms
- Cocunut Island Breeze-marshmallow, caramel and coconut
- Pink and Fluffy-pink lemonade and marshmallow
- Chocolate Classic-with m&ms
- Chocolate Wedding Cake-fluffy icing
- Cookie Monster-"submissive" choclate chip cookie [that's what the menu says!?!]
- Just Broke Up-the works: cookie, peanut butter cups, m&ms and butterfinger
- Slammin Samoas -coconut and caramel
Don't worry...I'm still cooking! I've had a few interesting experiences with marzipan that I will be posting shortly.
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2 comments:
Hi :) Couldn't help but stumble upon this blog. Cupmakes (not a typo... Cupcakes + make it yourself = Cupmakes... If you didn't notice you can pick your own icing/toppings) was started as a delivery-only cupcake bakery by UPenn kids last year. It was wildly popular at Penn... used to be able to order from their cute site at cupmakes.com but i don't think it's up anymore. I heard they recently sold it to Chestnut Diner so that they could open their first location in old city.
Oh! I had no idea!
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