"I got up this morning at 1:30 to make the dough at the commissary and transport it here," says Kleinman, who arrived at Table 6 bright and early -- at 3 a.m. -- to cut, proof and fry the doughnuts, which are then stuffed with curd and cream, mousse and fruit and topped with everything from grape caviar to spicy house-cured bacon right in front of your eyes with theatrics and showmanship.
His first customer? His dad, who showed up promptly at 5 a.m., an hour before Kleinman opened the pop-up.
"It's such an interesting concept," says Kleinman, "because we can collaborate and open really quickly, but it's definitely a restaurant opening, and the amount of time that goes into it, plus all the prep work, is a lot."
Still, he admits that pop-ups are way more fun than actually owning a brick-and-mortar, which is not on his agenda -- at least not in the foreseeable future. "Doing the pop-ups, especially ones like these, are what I enjoy most -- they make me feel like a kid, and I'm having a great time doing them," he says, adding that an ice cream pop-up is next. "We don't have a location yet, but it'll happen sometime in August, and I'm going to do some weird shit," he promises -- floating sundaes, for example.
In the meantime, Kleinman's doughnuts -- and some of the best coffee you'll ever drink -- are available at Table 6 between 6 and 11 a.m. through Saturday. And if you want to pre-order your doughnuts, you can do that, too, on the Inventing Room website. But before you bite, take a look through our photo gallery of Kleinman's sugar highs from this morning's pop-up.
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