Papabubble, a downtown candy lab specializing in flavorful hand-made hard candies, smells like the inside of a sugar bowl. Jars of crayon-colored treats line the walls, alongside oversized spiralling lollipops and jewel-hued ring pops. There’s usually a couple of candymakers at work behind the counter, in what amounts to a free show. Today they’re busy chopping up long glossy sticks of spun sugar into bite-sized discs. “Is that a ghost?” I ask, pointing to the tiny freakish face imprinted on each one, and I’m told it’s actually a special Hannibal Lecter Halloween candy. I’m handed a sample, which dissolves into bright mango on my tongue.

Watching candy being made is a strangely mesmerizing experience (see ropes of candy being pulled by hand in this CoolHunting video) and since Papabubble makes custom candies and sugar sculptures on request, there’s usually some new part of the process to watch, or a different flavor to sample, each time you visit. The prices for pre-packaged candies are not cheap–2oz bags run $5, 7oz small jars are $14.50, and a one-of-a-kind ring pop is $20—but the candies come in beautiful bespoke designs each one packs a lot of flavor.

Varieties include pink grapefruit, raspberry, anise, bergamot, pear, fizzy cola, red chili, ginger lemon, and several others. My favorite so far is watermelon with salt and chili (spicy, sweet, salty–just like the watermelon sugar cocktail from Mayahuel in candy form). This time around I did not spot the watermelon candies but I was sorely tempted by the black and white “Halloween mix” and ended up purchasing a big cherry-flavored black heart lollipop ($7). Highly recommended stop for sampling, browsing, or picking out a cute gift.

Papabubble
380 Broome St. between Mott St. and Mulberry St.
Tue.-Sat. 12pm-9pm, Sun 12pm-6pm
Other locations in Amersterdam, Barcelona, and Tokyo

Think Coffee serves a mean cappuccino any day, but their iced cappuccino is My Drink for the summer. This beverage consists of 3 shots of espresso mixed with a little cold milk (to avoid plastic cup meltage), a bunch of ice, and lots of fluffy foamed milk spooned over top. The fusion of warm foam settling over ice cubes is not to be missed, so be sure to grab yours off the counter as soon as it’s ready. While it’s not technically on the menu—the chalkboard lists an “iced latte” which contains more milk and less foam—it has quite a few fans. “This is my favorite drink to make,” said the barista during my last visit.

There are other coffeeshops that I like, such as Abraco and Ninth Street Espresso, but I generally don’t linger there. At Think, however, sometimes I’ll settle in and do some reading. If you can tolerate the top 40 they play on weekends, it’s the kind of roomy, laid-back corner locale that seems to invite hanging out in blast of the A/C, or grabbing a chair outside to muse over the yuppified shell of CBGBs. Often enough, there’s someone with a lot of bags who seems to have set up a temporary office/rsidence, although there’s no free wifi at the Bowery location. You have to head over to the Mercer Street locale, deep in NYU country, to have webernets with your Think Coffee.

As for the menu, the coffee is organic and fair trade, and the bagels are the first thing they run out of (around 10:30am). Later in the day Think servers tolerable pre-made sandwiches (about $7), including mozzarella and tomato, hummus and vegetables, and swiss and prosciutto, or toasted cheese made-to-order. A number of diet-busting treats, like rugelah, brownies, and pecan pie, are in regular supply. In the evening they server beer and wine, with $3 pints during happy hour from 7-8. Recently, the listed beer was the mighty tasty Sixpoint Sweet Action.

Think Coffee
1 Bleecker St. (corner of Bowery & Bleecker)
Also: 248 Mercer St. (between 3rd St. & 4th St.)
Mon-Fri 7am-11:30pm Sat & Sun: 8am-11:30pm

An all-vegan ice cream parlor that looks like an old-time sweet shop, Lula’s might be the lacktard’s jackpot. Now instead of envying the cone-lapping trances shuffling down the sidewalk, gastronomically-challenged folks and their omnivore buddies can bond over frozen treats here. The menu includes a couple of soy milk-based ice creams, including a convincing cake batter flavor, and about ten nut milk-based ice creams, many of them gluten-free. My favorite of the nut-based flavors is cinnamon, but other notables include orange creamsicle, cookies and cream, and mango coconut. Sampling is not only permitted, but encouraged, and I didn’t get any “omfg she’s asking for a fourth sample” attitude.

(There seems to be some variation in scoop sizing. On my second trip I got a much larger scoop)

As for taste, this is a pretty good dairy substitute, with no weird soy flavor and spot-on creamy texture. There’s a telling lack of buttery richness, but I can eat about half a dish ($3.75) before I even register it. Vegan treats like white-”chocolate” covered pretzels and pectin gummi bears are also for sale, not to mention egg creams ($3.75). An egg cream is a classic NYC beverage (Lou Reed even wrote a song about it) that usually consists of chocolate syrup, seltzer and milk mixed to form a fizzy head. Lula’s non-dairy version was a fair approximation of the classic egg cream I’d had at Gem Spa, although in both cases I got the sense that I was drinking a poor man’s ice cream float.

Lula’s Sweet Apothecary
516 East 6th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B
Wed 3pm-10pm Thu 3pm-12am Fri-Sat 3pm-1am

As a kid, I ate a lot of cereal. I knew the exact number of minutes it took for Rice Chex to get soggy. I knew how to eat Fruit Loops without scraping the top of my mouth on their sandpapery sugar coating. I could pick all the crunchberries out of a box of Cap’n Crunch, and leave it looking untouched. Even so, I had my limits. It usually crossed my mind to slurp the milk from my bowl when I’d finished my cereal, but there was something just faintly repellent about it, enough to keep me from doing it most of the time.

So sipping a plastic cup of cereal milk ($4) at Momofuku Desert Bar was, for me, a bittersweet dose of nostalgia. If you were the type of kid who did not feel conflicted at all about drinking milk steeped in Frosted Flakes, you probably shouldn’t miss this.  Fortunately there are enough items on the menu to keep the rest of us entertained.

The cookies ($1.75 each), for example, are top-notch examples of junk food fusion. The conflake-marshmallow-chocolate chip cookie puts the breakfast staple to better use, adding buttery crunch to its edges, while melted marshmallow centers remind me of the gooey hearts of rice krispie treats. It’s better than its vaguely saltier cousin, the compost cookie, which fuses chocolate and butterscotch chips with potato chips and pretzels. The corn cookie and blueberry cookies are both delicious, like the butter-soaked caps of muffins, but I’d skip the comparatively unexciting peanut butter cookie. Soft serve ($4) in unusual flavors, including sour gummy and red licorice, is another speciality here, and every customer is entitled to a tiny free sample. Even though I never liked gob stoppers, I can’t get enough of the fireball flavor. Individually-unwrapped ground-up gumballs add a touch of dimestore cinnamon, tempered by cool ice cream. Their website announces some new flavors, like rosemary and apricot, available starting June 17th.

The cakes ($5/piece) are a little more hit-or-miss. I found the dulce de leche cake and the tea-jelly-and-lemon Arnold Palmer cake overly sweet with little payoff. But both the banana cream-and-hazlenut crunch cake and simple pecan-based “crack” pie were almost worth the caloric sacrifice.

(photo by gothambill)

And then of course there’s always the showstopper, the pork buns ($9/two buns) made famous from David Chang’s other hotspots, Momofuku and Ssam Bar. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Momofuku so it’s hard to remember how the Milk Bar’s buns stack up. But most certainly, these tender, fatty slabs of pork belly folded on sweet, spongy steamed buns with pickled cucumber and hoisin sauce are the most decadent things on the menu.

If you’re planning to visit, prepare for weekend lines, loud music, and standing-only tables, but when all is said and done, a ten-minute wait goes quickly when what you really want is a conflake cookie and a taste of free soft serve. The best time to visit is early evening, but check their website since they are sometimes closed for private parties.

Momofuku Milk Bar
207 Second Ave (entrance on 13th Street)
Mon-Fri 8am-12am, Sat-Sun 9am-12am

The Japanese just might be the modern-day masters of cute. But wagashi, adorable pastries shaped like fruit, birds, and flowers, have served as traditional tea ceremony snacks for centuries. Although rare on this side of the Pacific, Minamoto Kitchoan sells wagashi in bright array, spot-lit in glass cases like the baubles at Tiffany’s.

Enjoyment of wagashi hinges on one’s opinion of the mochi (rice paste), sweet red-bean paste, and jellied fruits they’re made from. If you like treats that are sweet and potato-textured you’re in luck. But if in doubt, ingredient and freshness information is meticulously displayed on the oft-impenetrable plastic packaging.

A selection is pictured above. Hakuun-no-hotori ($3 – bottom left) consisted of condensed milk and sweet beans wrapped in crepe. Fukuwatashisenbei ($2 – top left) was really more of a classic vanilla wafer, with crisp, butter cookies encasing smooth crème. The pumpkin-shaped one ($2 – top middle) had a moist thin rice layer wrapped around sweet pumpkin-spiked beans. Wagashi can be bought individually for two or three bucks although a box of Shunen, pictured at the top of this post, will set you back a steep $27. (The petals are white bean paste wrapped in pink rice cake, while the middle is rice cake and merengue). Staff are unfailingly friendly, (as I stared at the daunting word Fukuwatashisenbei, one counterperson offered kindly, “cookie?”). Seasonal wagashi are available - this cherry blossom dessert on nycnosh looks too good to eat.

Minamoto Kitchoan
608 Fifth Avenue New York, NY
Sun-Thu 10am-7:30pm, Fri-Sat 10am-8pm