Miles Traveled: 929
States Entered: 4
Cupcakes Consumed: 4
After spending the night in Flagstaff, Arizona, Baron and I set off for Albuquerque, New Mexico. We arrived at Slate Street Cafe in time for a late lunch and decided to grab some "real food" in addition to our cupcakes.
Slate Street Cafe
Albuquerque, NM
The modern and spacious Slate Street Cafe was nearly deserted when we entered, which surprised us until we realized we'd jumped a time zone and gained an hour. I guess there's not a lot of lunchtime traffic at 3pm. We also realized that "cafe" is a very nebulous concept in the food service industry. When I hear the word "cafe", I think of a place with counter service and plenty of seating whose menu includes sandwiches, salads, baked goods, and various hot beverages. In Arizona we visited two "cafes" that only had a handful of barstools for seating. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Slate Street "Cafe" was a large, nice restaurant with full table service. The menu wasn't exactly pricey (sandwiches were $8-$10), but the atmosphere was definitely a couple notches nicer than your typical chain sit-down restaurant. In addition to the main seating area there was also a loft upstairs that could be reserved for special events as well as an outdoor patio.
We didn't notice any cupcakes on the lunch menu so we asked our friendly waitress about it. She brought us a dessert menu which in addition to several very scrumptious sounding cupcakes, also included chocolate cake, an apple pastry, and ice cream. They didn't have any vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting so we ordered the Blueberry Lemon cupcake and the Key Lime cupcake. Baron also ordered a chopped chicken salad.
While we waited for our food to arrive I was pleased to note a sign on our table indicating that Slate Street Cafe had switched to locally farmed, cage-free organic eggs. Yay! I often avoid ordering egg-based dishes in restaurants as I don't know where the eggs come from. Too bad we hadn't arrived around breakfast time!
I helped Baron finish some of the veggies in his salad which was really, really good. The italian dressing was delicious and all of the vegetables were sweet and crisp. After we had polished off the salad our waitress brought out our cupcakes. The Blueberry Lemon was fresh from the oven; it was so warm that a lot of the lemon frosting had melted and dripped down the sides, acting more like a "glaze" than a frosting. We spent several minutes debating whether or not it was even a cupcake as the "cake" had the taste and texture of a blueberry muffin. In the end we decided that since it was frosted, we would count it. (I think the fact that it was freaking delicious may have swayed us a bit.)
The Key Lime cupcake didn't look anything like a cupcake at all. At first we thought it was a frosted "muffin top" until we turned the plate and realized that the cupcake had just collapsed to the side. Unlike the Blueberry Lemon, this cupcake had the denser, spongier texture of a cake, and it was filled with an amazing Key Lime custard. The light, fluffy whipped vanilla topping was overly plentiful, but delicious. You can read detailed reviews of the two cupcakes on Slate Street Cafe's profile page.
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Cake Fetish
Albuquerque, NM
The next stop on our tour was Cake Fetish, our almost namesake. Like many other cupcakeries we've visited on this trip, Cake Fetish is located in a strip mall. The decor is bright, colorful and modern with plenty of seating. The refrigerated display case next to the counter was nearly empty when we arrived at 2:30pm, and the standing refrigerator next to the entrance was totally barren. Good thing we'd placed an order ahead of time! I gave the nice woman behind the counter my name and she went to the back and retrieved a box with our cupcakes. We ordered the Birthday Cake (vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream) and the Grasshopper (chocolate cake with mint buttercream).
Don't let the grocery store-like appearance of these cupcakes fool you. They are delicious! The cakes are good but the real treasures here are the frostings. Both of them tasted exactly like ice cream! Crazy! You can find reviews of Cake Fetish's cupcakes on their profile page.
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That was about it for Day 6. Next stop: Kansas City and Omaha!
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