Cereal Thrillers

In Chicago a few years ago, as the nation’s food press frothed about the city’s role at the front of the molecular gastronomy movement, the excitement among 10-year-olds was about the Wacker Drive restaurant Cereality, which specialized in breakfast cereal — the regular stuff out of the box, but mixed and garnished, chopped and channeled, in ways that parenting journals would never advise. Now Los Angeles has a cereal restaurant of its very own: JuJu Cereal Bar, a slick café tucked into a storefront just south of Westwood Village, where you can customize your Froot Loops with bananas and flax-seed powder, gummy bears and Nutella, crumbled Oreos or even a sprinkle of Kix, all moistened with your choice of milks — it’s like Pinkberry without the pesky frozen yogurt, although you can get that on your cereal too. My first stab at a JuJu bowl, Apple Jacks tricked out with pecans, vanilla wafers and a caramel drizzle, was just awful, clearly an amateur’s effort, but my daughter’s creation, which included Life, honey, strawberries and chocolate-covered pretzels, practically moved the counterman to tears. Fortunately, I’ve brought her up well: She shared. 1248 Westwood Blvd., Wstwd.; (310) 474-8571.

—Jonathan Gold