I am always seemingly a few weeks on the other side of a Levain Bakery visit on my travels to nicer cities, so my first-ever visit to any of Crumbl's ubiquitous locations stepped in to fill the gap until I am back in Chicago for a double at the West Loop and some Cubs games now that the Hawks season ended. Crumbl is one of those things I only know about from a limited amount of time on tiktok where that is one of the brands that is everywhere all at once, even though most of my feed has to do with raccoons eating grapes, Connor Bedard doing anything, or the end-of-the-known-internet comedy stop of mispronouncing such words as tzatziki and microwave.
If you find a way to make that kind of in-your-face marketing/influencing relatable to me I will eventually try your brand so I know whether the hype is deserved (Summer Fridays lip balm, heart eyes emoji) or must be fake (Kosas sunscreen, barf emoji). The thing that finally made Crumbl relatable to me was them hitting the double-whammy with the Canadian cookie real one (maple cream sandwich) and anything having to do with Oreo, which perhaps only Becky Albertalli understands how much of my life's decision tree comes down to whether there will be Oreos involved if I say yes or not - that is indisputable Simon logic, and never has led me astray, since following Oreos is kind of like Qui-Gon following the force where ever it may lead, whether that is the pointy end of a lightsabre in the bowels of Naboo or being a degenerate gambler on Tattooine.
This Crumbl location is across Westheimer from Target in a brand new strip mall perpendicular to the north side of Westheimer. There was ample parking since most of the bidnesses in the strip mall are not open yet. When I walked in I was the only customer. Of the two ordering tablets in the corner, one was not working. I am not sure how busy this place gets at peak since it is my first visit, but it is chaos at the Shake Shack a few blocks down Westheimer when they are down to one ordering tablet.
The store is clean, brightly lit with floor to ceiling windows, and relatively small, as the kitchen/freezer/bakery portion of the store takes up like 95% of the store's footprint, and you order and wait for your cookie in basically the ATM sized vestibule.
The one young man working had some music playing and was singing along to it while he worked. I think that says it is a festive atmosphere in the store, which I like, since it is cookies - not something bad about to happen to you, which you always feel like is possible when you walk into a store with music seemingly designed to get you to leave.
The menu changes every week so your mileage is going to vary based on what the week's selections are and whether you like/hate the flavours. I disliked the flavours of several weeks in a row so I did not come on lemon flavour weeks. The things that won't change are the actual store location and atmosphere - here it gets good marks that it was an easy, efficient ordering and pick up experience from a polite employee.
I ordered three cookies, and the cinnamon square had an additional upcharge of 49 cents that the other two did not. There is a price break if you buy four cookies but none of the other cookie options spoke to me. With tax three cookies plus the upcharge on cinnamon came out to $13.96. So these are still cheaper per cookie than Levain Bakery's double.
Maple cream. This was a 9.89/10. It is served dang cold but give it about 25 minutes to be the perfect temp for the maple to start soaking into the shortbread. I am not in Nova Scotia at the moment, but this cookie makes me feel like I am. Purchase purchase purchase!!
Cinnamon square. I rate her a 7/10. I was excited to see there was some real girth to the roll part of the cinnamon, but it was bland. The icing was far better than what was underneath. The icing was a 10/10 so I think they should add much more flavour to the roll part, or give less roll part and more frosting. Still worth the extra 49 cents to try.
Oreo birthday cake. I was so excited to try this, because Oreo. I was greatly disappointed by this. There are too many sprinkles, that is one. The cookie part is rock hard, dry, and brittle so it comes off in brittle, sandy pieces, that is two. The icing is simply ok (nowhere near as good as the cinnamon square) where it is not completely ruined by too many sprinkles, that is three. And they made my beloved Oreo look bad, that is four. In the new leaf I turned over when I almost died in 2020 I try to be less harsh, but this was just not a good cookie at all. In the store I expected it to be an 11/10. When I bit into the dull, rock hard, dry cookie my one bite cookie review was a 2/10 because I wanted to be generous even though I also wanted to take my opera glove off and slap someone in the face for doing this to my homegirl Oreo.
I know they change the menu every week but if you ever see maple cream sandwich you need to purchase this right here. read more