Finally a Sprinkles of our own...

[Beehive]

I see that Sprinkles in finally opening a location in the Bay Area. They chose Palo Alto and in an email I got from Lori at Sprinkles it should be open sometime in June.
This news made my weekend.

[Beehive]

I used to live in Los Angeles but originally from the Bay Area. That's where I fell in love with Sprinkles. liked them before they were a chain and on Oprah. I am certainly not the snobby type that when something becomes popular I am going to stop liking that product. If Doughboys became a chain - again I would still like them. I like good food where I find it and am not an elitist.

[Rina]

where in Palo Alto are they opening up...just curious.

[P. Punko]

Stanford Shopping Center.

[walker]

Are they taking the Oakville Grocery spot, next to Max's?

[Wendy_san]

Looks like it's taking the Long Life Noodle Company spot...

[milojon]

i live in san diego and just had my first sprinkle's cupcake up in LA and let me tell you it is ambrosia, like mana from the gods. Something that good must be like 1000 calories a cupcake, but so good! you guys will be hooked!

[wolfe]

East Bay entrants in the cupcake wars.
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/479697

[larochelle]

eh, I'm perfectly happy with Kara's - a locally owned with locally sourced ingredients and extremely good cupcakes - instead of some national chain.

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Kara's Cupcakes
3249 Scott St, San Francisco, CA 94123

[peterme]

Agreed. The last thing we need is LA-style trendoid idiocy in the Bay Area. It's not as if a Sprinkles means that the Bay Area has finally arrived!

In the East Bay, we've got Love at First Bite in Berkeley, better than any cupcake I've had elsewhere.

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Love At First Bite
1510 Walnut St, Berkeley, CA

[grubber4]

LA-style trendoid idiocy? What's that all about?

[Robert Lauriston]

Sprinkles is an LA chain. Sometimes they have lines out the door, like at Pinkberry.

Though the "cupcakery" fad actually started at Magnolia in New York. That's where Candace Nelson got the idea for Sprinkles.

Anybody know which restaurants her great-grandmother owned in SF?

[Wendy_san]

All I have heard is that her great-grandmother was of French-American descent and was known for her fine pastries. She owned three restaurants in San Francisco during the 1930s.

For some of us it isn't convenient to get to Berkeley, other parts of the East Bay or the Marina district of SF for our cupcakes. The Bay Area is large and spread out enough that I don't think a Sprinkles at the Stanford Shopping Center is going to bring harm to the other cupcakeries. You can never have too many cupcakes in my opinion.

[Robert Lauriston]

Competition is always good, but it seems odd that there's so much interest in an unopened branch of this Los Angeles-based national chain when nobody's reported on Festin's, which has been open most of a year.

http://www.festinsbakery.com/cupcakes...

Seems to me that making only cupcakes is not going to be the most fulfilling job for a talented pastry chef, so if you want the best and most soulful stuff, it'll be at a bakery with a wide range of products.

[Wendy_san]

Yes, that's a good point about a bakery and I am happy to go to bakeries that have seating, which is what I like about a place like Sprinkles. From what I can see on the Festin's site is that it's just for delivery -- at least they don't seem to list a street address as far as I can tell. For me, I like the idea of a cupcakery that is also run like a cafe. I also like Satura Cakes (a full service Japanese-European-style bakery) in Los Altos and Palo Alto, which has seating, but I don't recall seeing cupcakes there.

[P. Punko]

Satura does have some nice stuff. I like some of their little cookies that you can get small bags of near the register. Also, their cream puffs are good, but not the same as a Beard Papa cream puff. My wife likes their "crispy brioche" and I sometimes get their "raspberry brioche donut", which tastes kind of like a donut (very chewy) I've had at Han Kook Korean market.

[JasmineG]

I've had day old cupcakes from Sprinkles that were better than all of the most frequently mentioned cupcake bakeries in the Bay Area that I've tried save Teacakes (and I have yet to try Kara's). Well, Sibby's are great, but they're only pre order (and large order) so they can't really be compared to the rest. That's why I'm happy about Sprinkles coming. Granted, Palo Alto is out of my usual circuit, and I don't see myself driving down there for a cupcake, but I'm down that way once every few months or so, and I would definitely detour across town for a good one.

[P. Punko]

I don't like the frostings I had at Kara's- the buttercream tasted like just butter and only butter, so it didn't seem decadent or anything, because I didn't want to feel like I was just eating a stick of butter. I've had lots of cupcakes in various places in the country during the current craze and Kara's were a disappointment.