Like it or not, on Saturday morning the Cronut® invaded Los Angeles. Or rather, The Grove and more specifically Barneys New York. Nestled against a wall of Balenciaga bags, Cronut mastermind Dominique Ansel and his team, some local and some imported from his Soho, New York patisserie, distributed the prized milk and honey-flavored croissant-doughnut pastry within Ansel´s signature Cronut carrier branded with the Barneys logo.
Sure those New York lines have been a doozy, and Los Angeles was no exception. The very first Angeleno in line hit The Grove at 2:30 a.m. the evening before Cronut festivities to claim a space, meanwhile the second person had driven up from San Diego. By 9:30 a.m. (doors opened at 10 a.m.), three hundred and fifty people had collected by The Grove´s valet stand to score one of the 700 Cronuts prepared for the day. Another fifty people stood patiently for hours on a sort of wait list line — those not even guaranteed a Cronut.
Meanwhile, inside Barneys, Ansel posed for photos with fans, urging them to fill in the blank on a dry erase board which read, “I had to ___________ for a Cronut!”