Nostalgia and an opportunity to reimagine her childhood propelled Savannah Martinez to drive more than 300 miles from Arizona to Friday’s grand opening of the first Hello Kitty and Friends Cafe in Los Angeles, located at Universal CityWalk Hollywood.
Adorned in kitten ears and matching white Hello Kitty platform boots, 24-year-old Martinez arrived at 2 a.m. to be the first person in line. She and her three friends — equally adorned in pastel pink and some in permanent Sanrio tattoos — vibrated with excitement before the cafe opened at 11 a.m. They were the first to order at an outdoor counter, with at least 100 people queued behind them.
Sporting pink hair, Martinez’s friend Vanessa Gonzalez, 26, explained why she braved the sweltering heat. “We’re all healing our inner child,” she said. “I loved Hello Kitty, but when we were kids we couldn’t afford it. So now that we’re adults we spend our money on Hello Kitty. ... I can’t help myself and I can afford it.”
Gonzalez still thinks of the Hello Kitty television she couldn’t afford to buy when she was a young kid.
Nevis Aguillon, a 36-year-old who lives in downtown Los Angeles, nodded her head in agreement. “Hello Kitty is too expensive for children,” she said.
Festooned with a giant signature Hello Kitty pink bow and framed with a pastel pink and white striped awning, the outdoor cafe offered a grab-and-go menu of desserts and sweet drinks.
Hello Kitty Cafe also currently operates outposts in Irvine, Las Vegas and Vancouver. There is also a Gudetama Cafe, which opened earlier this year at Buena Park Downtown Mall.
On Friday the crowd at Hello Kitty and Friends consisted of mostly adults — many of them Latinos. Few were children.
Hello Kitty’s long-lasting power was palpable inside the adjacent store and just outdoors, where hundreds of Sanrio aficionados formed lines for the cafe and shop well into the afternoon.
“Oh, my God, that’s so cute” was overheard repeatedly.
Anthropologist Christine R. Yano said the pink-bowed Japanese character’s long-lasting appeal is based on her flexibility.
“She can become anything to anyone,” said Yano, a retired professor from the University of Hawaii who spent years studying the phenomenon that is Hello Kitty. “She can appeal to a preschooler. She can appeal to a 9-year-old. She can appeal to a 19-year-old or 29-year-old and it goes on, for different reasons. It doesn’t have to be for the same reason.”
Yano, author of the book “Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific,” said Hello Kitty’s simplicity — including the spareness of the character design — makes her endure.
“Hello Kitty can be edgy and punk. She can be cute,” Yano said. “She keeps giving fans different things, depending on what they want or what they need.”
The cafe debuted simultaneously and next door to the Sanrio Smile Shop, offering collectible merchandise such as backpacks, T-shirts and plush toys featuring Hello Kitty, Cinnamoroll, Keroppi, Kuromi, My Melody, Badtz-Maru and Chococat. Customers also bought Hello Kitty and Friends Cafe-themed merchandise, exclusively for sale at the shop.
Guests at the outdoor cafe indulged in sweet treats and specialty beverages inspired by the beloved character and her Sanrio crew of friends.
Every few minutes a group of Sanrio devotees inside the store chanted, “Hello Kitty. Hello Kitty. Hello Kitty.”
At the cafe, the Sanrio-themed cafe menu features several playful, sugar-laden desserts, including a strawberry cake and a mocha chocolate dome cake inspired by Chococat.
The cutesy treats included a rainbow-sprinkled Hello Kitty-shaped sugar cookie and a macaron set in flavors of raspberry, caramel, vanilla, pistachio and chocolate.
Aguillon savored a slice of the Hello Kitty Mousse Dome, a red chocolate dome-shaped cake with cinnamon mousse, apple pie filling and cinnamon streusel.
“This is a 10 out of 10,” she said of the sweet treat.
But the berry and cream churro topped with cream cheese frosting and pink sprinkles proved a bit too saccharine for most in the group. “I would give it an 8.5,” Martinez said.
Beverages were a hit, given the 100-plus degree weather. The drinks are inspired by several of the wildly popular Japanese characters.
Hello Kitty Strawberry Green Iced Tea featured a pink sugar rim, while the Chococat Frozen Mocha includes chocolate boba.
Nelly Martinez — a friend but not related to Savannah — sipped a bit of a blue-hued raspberry lemonade named after Tuxedosam, a dapper penguin character from the Sanrio universe. “I’m diabetic,” Martinez said. “I just got it for the picture.”
“Can you do a video of me tasting the churro?” Savannah Martinez asked Gonzalez. She planned to post it to her Instagram devoted to Hello Kitty.
She wasn’t looking forward to the drive home to Arizona. She had to leave the same day.
“I have to work tomorrow,” she said. “I need to make that adult money.”
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