Yes, We Speak Cupcake As a young student at the multinational Aramco(阿拉伯) school in Dhahran (达兰), Saudi Arabia (沙特) , Fadi Jaber, a son of Palestinian refugees, always preferred his American classmates’cupcakes, brownies and chocolate chip cookies to his mother’ s pastries. But when he tasted a vanilla - frosted vanilla (香草) cupcake from the Magnolia Bakery in Greenwich Village in 2004, it changed his life. He quit his marketing job at Unilever and used his savings to enroll in a baking management program at the Institute of Culinary(烹饪的) Education in Manhattan.
And after an internship at Billy’s Bakery in Chelsea, he was ready for his next move: In July 2007, in Amman, Jordan, he opened Sugar Daddy’s, the shop that brought the cupcake craze to the Middle East.
Cupcake shops have become as ubiquitous(到处存在的) as hot dog stands in some American cities, and have spread to Rome ; Istanbul ; Berlin ; Seoul, South Korea; and Sydney, Australia. Now Mr. Jaber has proved that even the Arab world is not immune to such a Western food.
Members of Jordan’s royal family stop by the shop in jcans and sweatshirts, ordering boxes of cupcakes while their bodyguards wait outside. It is rumored that Queen Rania is a fan.
Since December 2008, the shop, which also sells cheesecakes and brownies, has been in the well -to -do neighborhood of Abdoun, which is thick with embassies and upscale (高消费的)restaurants. Mr. Jaber has also opened a Sugar Daddy’s in Beirut and in Dubai.
Most of his s were familiar with cupcakes from living or studying abroad. Others knew them from the TV show" and the City" which has been shown on regional satellite stations for a few years. One customer asked him to draw lips on every cupcake. When he asked her why, she replied, "Because that’s so’ and the City. ’ "
Nabil al- Rabaa, Mr. Jaber’s partner in Beirut, where the shop opened late last year, said that while most customers had encountered cupcakes before, there was initial confusion. "There were a lot that would say, "I’ll take that muffin, and one of those muffins, "Mr. al - Rabaa said. "Please, these are cupcakes ! "Kamal Mouzawak, a food writer and founder of Lebanon’s first farmers’ market, said that the chain appeals to the region’s historic sweet tooth.
At first most customers in Beirut confused cupcakes with muffins.