Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The menu at the wildly popular Momofuku Bakery - Milk Bar is a good example of the recent trend in domestisexy consumer goods, including food.

soft serve:

new flavors! (updated feb 11)

cereal milk
marshmallow cereal milk

sweet corn cereal milk

fruity cereal milk


toppings:

cornflake crunch

lucky charms

cap'n crunch

fruity pebbles

banana crumbs

charred marshmallow

Some people might argue that the ability to purchase "cereal milk" in a restaurant is really just part of the current comfort food trend, but I think it's more than that. Comfort food is heavy food. I think people intend comfort food to mean "the food that mom cooked." But how many people really grew up eating fried chicken, homemade mac and cheese, meatloaf, creamed x,y,and z? Old fashioned? Yes. Homemade? Not necessarily. But cereal milk: homemade? Yes. Milk Bar is probably the first restaurant in the country to sell cereal milk. Until now I don't think those two words were uttered in the media at all - it was an occurrence people dealt with at home - either by drinking it or dumping it down the sink. This is all to say that the fact that such a quotidien, humble, almost banal product is being sold at one of the most trendy new establishments in the city speaks to the fetishization of the domestic. Domestisexy? Yes.

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