ChikaLicious Is Coming to Williamsburg

ChikaLicious Dessert Bar has set an opening date for its West Village location — and here’s some more sweet news: it plans to expand to Williamsburg next year.

The East Village dessert spot – home to the cronut-esque “doughssant,” among other quirky confections – is aiming to open at 27 Bedford Street, near Downing Street, on October 1. Don Tillman – co-owner with his wife, head chef Chika Tillman – is calling this “the origin of the national rollout of ChikaLicious,” with the West Village location serving as the “prototype” for stores they hope to open nationwide. Those will join ChikaLicious’s international outlets in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Seoul, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Jakarta, and Tokyo.

The Williamsburg location will be in a hotel, with a planned opening on Nov. 1, 2015. Tillman declined to provide more details at the moment.

For the past 11 years, Chef Chika and the team have been serving an ever-changing dessert menu at two locations on East 10th Street, between First and Second Avenues: an intimate 20-seat sit-in place called ChikaLicious Dessert Bar and a bakery and café across the street called the Dessert Club, ChikaLicious.

The ChikaLicious across town will be a hybrid of the two. Unlike the East Village dessert bar, the new place will be open seven days a week, with the bakery section open from 7 a.m. until midnight and the sit-down service bar from 3 p.m. until midnight.

Customers will enter to a 12-seat bar. Past that will be the bakery counter, where pastries and drinks can be purchased and eaten in store or taken out. Brick and wood décor will project an “earthy and relaxed atmosphere,” Tillman said.

Chef Chika will continue to head the East Village location, but in the West Village, her role will be filled by Safia Osman, a pastry chef who graduated from the International Culinary Center and previously worked at Gramercy Tavern, as well as at ChikaLicious.

The bar and bakery menus at the West Village location will be the same as at the East Village locations, with the potential addition of some innovative pancake desserts.