10 ways to blend in with the normcore café crowd

Normcore fashion is taking over the world… and now it’s taking over our diets too.

Normcore restaurants such as the Cereal Killer Café, Simply Crispy and the Porridge Café are popping up quicker that toast this year. Last year, Google’s annual A Year in Search survey – a review of the moments that defined 2014 – revealed that normcore was the most Googled trend of the year.

According to K-Hole, the New York trend forecasting group, normcore means the ability to blend in and not stand out with whatever lifestyle you’ve chosen. But despite its growing popularity, not everyone is impressed by its invasion in the restaurant scene.

Giles Coren, restaurant critic for The Times says: “I only ever take the piss out of the idea of ‘up and coming trends’. It’s all bollocks. I couldn’t care less what a load of bearded tattooed twenty-somethings in Hoxton think is a cool restaurant.”

With most normcore fans sporting vintage Reeboks, their Dad’s 80s patterned shirt and nylon anoraks, stepping into these retro cafés to taste bowls of overpriced cereals and bog-standard crisp sandwiches can be quite intimidating.

But fear not. XCity+ has all you need to know how to seem as normcore as possible:

1. Have an obligatory beard/tattoo/piercing

2. Wear one of the following (or all at the same time depending on the degree of normcore hipster you’re aiming for): bum bag/patterned shirt/denim everything/woolly jumpers/plastic glasses/beanie/loafers