There’s a cocktail bar with a breakfast cereal theme, and it looks cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs
There are plenty of visuals and nostalgia at the new Cereal Cocktail Bar, a pop-up from Bucket Listers through April 27. Shrimp poppers made with Cinnamon Toast Crunch, anyone?
Philly has Halloween-theme bars and Christmas-theme bars and even a martini bar that’s (over)decorated with plushies. Not surprisingly, it now has an Instagrammable bar themed to breakfast cereal.
Bucket Listers — which creates “experiences” around the country (there’s a Malibu Barbie Cafe opening soon in Austin) — is behind Cereal Cocktail Bar, a pop-up at Foundation, the intimate bar beneath the Divine Lorraine (699 N. Broad St.). Bucket Listers also created the Holly Jolly bar at Foundation a few months ago and it plans to take Cereal on the road to San Francisco and Chicago after it wraps in Philadelphia on April 27.
Tickets for a 90-minute nighttime time slot start at $18 and include one cocktail.
The TikTok visuals are there, including step-and-repeats, plenty of neon, a Got Milk? photo booth, TVs playing cereal commercials, and shelves of cereal boxes. You can order a bowl of cereal — nine varieties for $5, $1 extra for oat or almond milk. But you probably want something more substantial from Natalie Maronski, Foundation’s executive chef and a Top Chef alumna.
Maronski’s cereal-themed menu includes fried chicken thigh crusted with cornflakes and served on cornbread ($15); shrimp poppers made with Cinnamon Toast Crunch and served with curry mayo ($16); a hoagie of pork balls topped with crushed Apple Jacks and ginger glaze ($15); and cheesecake topped with crumbled Trix ($8) and garnished with strawberries.
Eight cocktails come garnished with cereal, too. Put Your Milk in My Cocoa Puffs ($16), for example, mixes vodka, Frangelica, Kahlua, and milk, and gets a graham cracker rim with an espresso martini-like sprinkling of Cocoa Puffs cereal.
The Sunday brunch ticket ($39) includes a welcome mimosa and entree. Some items from the evening menu carry over. There also are brunch-y dishes, such as avocado toast with tomatoes, cucumber, arugula, poached egg, and Kix cereal ($18); croque madame with pork roll, broccoli rabe, bechamel, and a fried egg ($13); cinnamon-almond French toast with Trix crumble and whipped cream ($17); and braised beef short rib with rice grits, greens, and a spiced Cocoa Puff glaze ($20).
Evening reservations start at 5 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday. Sunday brunch seatings start at 12:45 p.m. and 1:30 p.m.