East Village cafe tracks down viral Olympic Village muffins, flies them in from France in tricky feat
Getting these muffins was no cakewalk.
An East Village cafe owner and a local foodie got so obsessed with tasting the chocolate muffins that went viral during the 2024 Olympic games in Paris, they waged a gold medal winning effort to get them from France to the Big Apple.
Angel Zheng, owner of Isshiki Matcha, teamed up with a sweet-toothed stranger she met on TikTok, Kelin Carolyn Zhang, to track down the mouthwatering double chocolate chip muffins at a little-known bakery in central France.
“Everyone wanted to taste the muffins, so I thought, ‘Why not try?” Zheng told The Post. “It was very much a passion project and I really just wanted to try the muffins myself.”
The women had dozens of the treats delivered by plane for a single-day pop-up sale last Saturday at the restaurant — where locals waited in a two block-long line starting at 6 a.m. to pay $10 per muffin.
Zheng said they plunked down $3,000 for 300 the goodies and barely broke even — but are nevertheless planning to ship in 1,000 more.
The muffins became a social media star earlier this month when Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen posted 10 videos raving that it was the most delicious treat in the Olympic Village dining hall.
Other athletes, including gold medal fencing pro Lee Kiefer, called the baked good — which has huge chocolate chunks and a gooey melted chocolate center — the best thing since sliced bread.
As internet collectively salivated, the muffin earned a write-up on the food site Eater and caught the attention of Zhang, a Brooklyn-based designer who was previously unaffiliated with the cafe.
Zhang saw the videos on TikTok and became hyper-focused on tracking down and trying the muffins, she told Gothamist, which was the first to report the story.
“I was like, OK, this seems still so much more attainable than me going to the Olympics and eating a muffin,” she told Gothamist. “I just wanted to see if it could be done. So, I just kept going.”
Using her online sleuthing skills, she found Coup De Pates, a French food supplier whose website featured photos of what appeared to be the famous muffin. It was later confirmed to be the viral treat by Eater.
But the bakery, located in Ferrières-en-Brie, has a business-to-business delivery model and wasn’t set up to export food to New York.
So Zhang put out a call on TikTok asking to team up with a New York City restaurant in order to get them to the Big Apple, she said.
“I framed it in very capitalistic terms … but really, I just wanted to try the muffin myself,” she said. “[I wrote] ‘Hey, does any restaurant or café or anything want to partner on this? I think there is an incredible opportunity here.”
The cafe owner saw the post and the two women joined forces.
“I just really just very casually was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it. Like this sounds like a fun project,’” Zheng said. “I really also for selfish reasons want to try these Olympic muffins.”
They then hounded Coup de Pates via email, phone and social media, asking the company to send the famous muffin to Isshiki Matcha on Second Avenue.
The firm eventually agreed to ship 300 of the baked goods but the women still had to get through an FDA approval process and arrange for a van to transport the muffins from the Newark Airport.
The women also worked with a customs broker who picked up the muffins, which were packed with dry ice.
“They have never worked with business in New York, so as soon as those muffins got on the French airport airplane, we were left to our own devices,” Zheng said.
She said the muffin lives up to its buzz.
“They lived up to the hype. They’re very well made,” Zheng said. “They’re moist without being too sweet and it’s a little bit more dense than a regular muffin.”
“These are the perfect density. They’re not crumbling everywhere and there’s big chunks of chocolate and there’s a chocolate ganache in the center that gives it a lava cake feel,” she said.
The muffins sold out in less than two hours at an event, dubbed “Muffin Mania,” at the cafe Saturday.
“The niche muffin community really showed up for us. We sold out in an hour and half,” Zheng said.“It pissed off a lot of people, because it’s a $10 muffin, but it made so many people happy.”
“The line went for two blocks,” Nicole Cheung, 21, a barista at Isshiki Matcha told The Post.
“I only had a bite of the muffin, a small bite, but they lived up to the hype,” she said. “I can understand why the Olympic athletes were obsessed with them.”
Zhang and Zheng are now planning to buy another shipment of at least 1,000 muffins “directly from the people who make them.”
“I’m working on getting more muffins as we speak,” Zheng said.
