vip in the city

Candy everybody wants

Veterans Day was one day earlier, but my office was observing the holiday today, which gave me another reprieve on a day when almost everyone else I knew had to work. My afternoon of leisure consisted of a vegan lunch at NoLIta’s Wild Ginger followed by a visit to the new Papabubble shop to watch the pretty candies being made.

Once we entered the rather plain storefront on Broome, we were enveloped by a wonderful smell: that steam-cooked mixture of corn syrup and sugar. Inside the shop had the appearance of a sleek candy laboratory: all white subway tiles, brushed metal counters and beakers of colored oils.

Papabubble was empty this afternoon but for us and three employees: one cashier, and two candy makers who were hard at work, pulling and shaping large, malleable blocks of sugar. As the pair moved quickly in tandem to run the candy through the extruder, the woman looked up from her work. No doubt sensing our fascination through the plexiglass barrier, she asked if we’d like to sample some fresh candy. Would we?! She obligingly cut off a couple pieces from the end with a pair of scissors, and I popped the warm, chewy, cherry-flavored piece into my mouth. Holy moly, what do they put in these things… crack cocaine?

Maybe, because I was hooked. (First one’s always free, right?) Afterwards, I spent an inordinate amount of time perusing the shop’s left wall, where shelves of the cheery-looking glass jars ($14.50 and $25 — refillable at a discount) and bags ($7.50 for 4 ounces) of hard candies were spotlit to glittering effect, like bits of Venetian Murano glass.

At the front counter, gorgeous lollipops of varying sizes — $4 to $15:

For the more economically-minded, the shop had a few aesthetically-inferior candy “irregulars,” ranging in size from a golf ball to wider than a palm. (This hefty disk was marked “$ five bucks.”)

I wonder how they get the letters inside the candy for the New York mix (center)? And is each borough represented by a different flavor?

Tags: candy, Papabubble, SoHo, sugar