It's Barbie summer so I went to the Malibu Barbie Cafe :)
A gastronomic experience like no other...
Happy Barbie summer! I announced the day after the Barbie movie trailer dropped that I was going to adopt a Barbie aesthetic this summer, and have been thrifting blasphemously bright, itty-bitty pink and green articles of clothing ever since. I’ve been walking the streets of Brooklyn looking like an absolute fool and loving it; recently, I went to a coffee shop with my friend Hunter and the barista told us we were “giving Margot Robbie” and my heart leapt out of my chest.
When I was a kid, my mother disapproved of Barbie dolls in a very vocal way, so I had to hide mine — they became my dirty little secret, and I regularly spent hours on my own in my bedroom with the door closed, making up stories in my head and hurriedly pushing the dolls under the bed whenever anyone knocked. Here’s an excerpt from an essay called “Barbie” that I wrote back in high school:
I never had that moment when I looked in the mirror and compared myself to a Barbie. You know what I’m talking about: that moment in the ads for body positivity when the little girl puts down her doll and goes to stare at herself in the mirror, sucking in her gut, pursing her lips, measuring her body against the doll’s. I was never so obvious as that. But the Barbies did affect me. They patiently tutored me in beauty, teaching me how cheekbones and hips and clavicles should look before I knew the names of any of those parts. I learned about eyelashes, how they were supposed to be longer on the top eyelid and curl outwards; I learned about thighs, how they were supposed to separate to form a gap; I learned about hair, how it was supposed to be perfectly straight or perfectly curled and so blond that it was almost yellow. And I may not have had that movie moment when I looked in the mirror and wished I looked like my dolls, but I had many moments when I could have looked in the mirror and chose not to.
Anyway, memories of Barbie weddings and the shameful, repressed desire to look like a Barbie while being a bizarre, awkwardly-tall tomboy have all been swirling around in my head for the past few months. In an effort to rewrite history and embrace my new, campy Barbie era, I purchased two tickets to the Malibu Barbie Cafe as a birthday present for my friend Mali.
What food do you serve at a restaurant inspired by a doll whose waist is almost as thin as her neck? The menu at this pop-up tries to make puns, but ends up missing the mark — options include a “California Dreamin’ Club Sandwich,” a “Make Waves Avocado Toast,” and the “Live Your Dream Grilled Cheese,” which isn’t a pun at all and is also somehow $44. I would love to chat with whoever thought up the drink name “Sun is Hot Tea” to determine how ironic these choices are.
To make matters even stranger, you need to order your food when you book your ticket, so we didn’t even need to look at the embarrassing menus. We had ordered the breakfast burrito and the CALI-flower bowl. The burrito ingredient ratio was insane: the majority of the filling was composed of French fries, with a smattering of bacon and about half an egg’s worth of egg. It made my mouth extremely dry. The cauliflower was demonstrably better — we agreed it could be served at Sweetgreen.
Ultimately, the pop-up is less about the terrible food and more about the “experience,” by which they mean the photo opps. There are several designated areas where you can pretend to be Barbie in the restaurant — you can pretend to be Barbie in front of a stereo, you can pretend to be Barbie on a surfboard, you can pretend to be Barbie in a box, etc. etc. After 90 minutes, the event listing warns that they’ll kick you out, but I can’t imagine finding enough to do that you would want to spend a full 90 minutes on the property.
The Malibu Barbie cafe will go down in my memory as possibly the lamest meal I’ve ever dragged anyone to. In retrospect, there was no way it could have healed my bruised inner tomboy. I’ll still be seeing the Barbie movie next week, though — a girl can continue to dream. (Live your dream, grilled cheese.)
Here’s what else I’ve been writing recently:
AITA if I ask my girlfriend to get rid of her enormous snake? – A little bit of a fictional palate cleanser! This piece is a tad raunchy and very online of me. (If you’re one of my grandparents, feel no need to click.)
Perpetual Stew Night in Bushwick is a hearty bowl of never-ending hilarity – Thank you to Hannah Docter-Loeb, my very impressive journalist friend, who discovered Annie Rauwerda’s perpetual stew, knew I would be obsessed with the concept, and sent it my way. I fully believe that this weekly gathering is the easiest way to make friends in Brooklyn this summer.
Cool things to do for the whole family in Martha’s Vineyard – I finally got a chance to write about the a cappella group that inspired me to sing in college! Plus, an insanely fluffy bunny.
Everything you need to know about T-Swirl Crepe – The T-Swirl PR team reached out to me to do a tasting at the newest location of T-Swirl Crepe, which happens to be around the corner from my parents’ house! So fun. Hunter’s hands are the star of this story.