“Art who?” Artists would joke in Soho “in the old days.” Somewhere, hipsters may still be asking what — or who — is Art? But, for the rest of us, Art is Richie Rich: big money, big ideas.
Our evening ended sweetly, with thoughts of dessert, chatting up the former Magnolia bakery magnate, Steve Abrams. He just sold the company and was taking a weekend in the Hamptons. He had taken the Greenwich Village cupcake store that “Sex and the City” made famous, into an international franchise.
Banana pudding — not cupcakes — turned out to be his biggest seller. For cupcakes, vanilla/vanilla still rules. (There’s a punchline there.) The “Sex and the City” cupcake was vanilla with pink icing. But, Abrams represented for us chocoholics. “I go to their meetings,” he laughed. “I like to eat the top of the chocolate cupcake, right out of the oven, so hot you have to juggle it, like a ‘Seinfeld’ episode.”
And when you’re the Magnolia King, you can have your cupcake and eat it too.