We wouldn’t usually start a Fork with a video, but...well, you need to take a look at this:
What were you looking at, you ask? That, dear readers, is a promo video from Little Caesar’s Pizza, and one that ostensibly promotes a new pizza featuring corn on the cob rather than crust (or pizza bones, as we call them), and we are scared. You might have noticed it purportedly comes with a 2-liter bottle of butter, and that makes us scared, too.
Here’s the thing, though—and we mean this especially for those of you thinking how this is obviously a bit—we’re scared because we can’t know if it’s real or not until it truly exists. That is to say, we’re weirded out that we’ve come to a point in human history wherein a fast pizza chain can tell the world it has a corn cob pizza on the way, and we can’t know for sure if they’re faking.
Look at Pizza Hut, famed purveyors of cheese in as many places as possible. We once ate a pizza from Pizza Hut that had little bready cups full of cheese in place of crust. We once had a pizza from Pizza Hut that had so much cheese rolled up into the crust that it nearly lodged itself in our throat. We’re alive now, obviously, but barely. Or what of Domino’s cheese-on-the-bottom-ness? That thing where they bake cheese into the bottom of the pizza? Did you know about that? Did you know that’s a thing? Oh, it’s a thing, baby.
Outside of the pizza sphere, we continue to be greatly weirded out by the KFC Double Down (we don’t like capitalizing food names like that, but it comes from the Double Down region of France, so...), what is essentially a grilled cheese sandwich with bacon, only rather than a bun, it’s served betwixt two pieces of fried chicken. Is...how is that legal? Can we trace the heart attacks specifically to the Double Down? And spare us your “Freedom!” chants about how you should be able to destroy your body if you want, libertarians and Braveheart fans—we’re making jokes here. Food YouTube...uh...guy, Joshua Weissman makes a fancier version of the KFC monstrosity for some reason, and you can watch him do that right here.
Don’t even get us started on the McRib, a vaguely rib-shaped pork sandwich from McDonald’s that we can only imagine exists by goo-ifying pork and then pressing it into its shape with a machine usually made from molding plastics. People don’t love that thing, true, but it seems like more people do. Why would they bring it back so often?
We know we don’t have an In-n-Out here (which is fine, it’s just a burger, GOD!), but we do know there’s a so-called secret menu from which patrons can order the 4x4, the literal largest hunk of greasy meat we’ve ever seen. We’d post a photo, but we know we have a lot of vegan fans and we’re pretty sure we put people through too much with the corn pizza already, soooo...here’s a link if you’re interested.
But let’s get back to the original point, which is actually just a question: Are we OK, America? Like, why do we need these things? And why are we in a position wherein we literally can’t tell if there’ll be a corn pizza, but we won’t be the least bit surprised if it does flare into existence? Underlying these concerns is our knowledge that our country’s food setup is already so stacked against the poor—do we really need to make the cheaper food the most disgusting stuff of all time? Sound off...what’re your thoughts, dear readers? Is corn pizza real? If it is, will you eat it? Is this just an April Fool’s thing happening way before April Fool’s? Did we die and this is purgatory?
Also
-Earlier this week, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill into law that will provide free breakfast and lunch to all New Mexico schoolkids. You’d have to be a Dick Dastardly-level mustache-twirling super-villain to not understand that’s a good thing (side note about Dick Dastardly? Good luck pinning down our age now, dorks!). Between free college for nerds, free food for the kids and legal weed for discerning stoners, New Mexico is becoming a pretty cool place to be lately. Suck on that, California, with your possibly no Skittles bullshit! More on that later.
-Despite news in January that numerous New Mexico chefs and eateries had made the semifinalist round for this year’s James Beard Awards (including Santa Fe’s Horno and El Chile Toreado), the final nominations announced earlier this week paint a different picture. In total, New Mexico can count one nomination—Diné chef Justin Pioche of the Pioche Food Group in Doolkai (aka Upper Fruitland). It’s a little disappointing to not see more NMs all up in the noms list, but we all know the truth: New Mexico has pretty much the best food in all the land.
-It’s possible you’ve heard about local coffee roasting company Wolf & Mermaid, but it’s also possible you haven’t, which is why we’re gonna tell you about it. The project of Scott Baird and Kate Kudynska, the company began as more of a special events thing at the Farmers Market in Los Alamos or Santa Fe arts markets, but we now hear the company is moving foward on more than one brick and mortar location, including inside the Bourbon Grill, a not-yet-disclosed downtown Santa Fe space and in Los Alamos.
-You might wanna sign up for the Santa Fe Farmers Market Ag Bag subscription running from April 5-June 28. For $35 a week (or $455 for all 13), subscribers get a weekly bag with six to eight items from market vendors, and you only have until 11:59 pm on April 1 to get in on the goodness. Go here to do that (and there are other cool buyable things, too).
-Word on the street (by which we mean an internet post we saw) is that Crepas-oh will start serving dinner Wednesday through Saturday til 9 pm. Sweet, right? We’re not sure what’s on the menu yet, but have you seen the pastries over there? Oh. Our. God.
-Have you been to The Bubble King over there on St. Michael’s Drive since it recently opened? You’ve not? Welllllll, let us let you in on something: neither have we. Still, we’ve always liked little gelatinous floaties in our drinks, so this new boba tea place is officially on our list.
-And that’s it in local stuff for the week. SFR is fixing to publish our Restaurant Issue next week, so we’re pretty focused on that. Plus, some weeks are just kind of slow for crazy restaurant developments. Sue us! Actually, don’t.
Pour yourself a cup of tea and think about the bubbles.
SHOUT-OUT FROM A READER!
“I love Il Vincenzo, but not all the time!”
Our mom, presumably trying to name Il Vicino (the pizza place), which she loves, but, like, not every single day, though. As for the rest of youse guys, well, we thought when we kicked off this section that we’d be drowning in locals going wild and shouting out the places they love. In the interest of transparency, we wanted to let you know this isn’t really going great, though, and we might just discontinue it. Good hustle out there, though, buddies who did send stuff in.
More Tidbits
-While we say that our intro about corn pizza still rings true, between the time we wrote it and then started writing this section, we discovered that corn pizza is, indeed, a bit, and it was meant to get us pumped about the return of Little Caesar’s pretzel crust pizza. In retrospect, if they’d left out the 2-liter bottle of butter, the joke might have sold better. Still, we say, it’s not unfathomable that a chain would make such a thing and we stand by our words. We also stand by not finding and writing about an entirely new topic at this point in our work week, so...yeah.
-Do you know the name Darren McGrady? If it rings a bell, perhaps that’s because you’re a food freak who knows about chefs to the stars. In this case, it’s not stars so much as the royal family, but that’s old news, Jack, because McGrady has now opened a fish and chips truck in Britannia that is probably pretty OK. Good for you, Darren!
-Skittles are in the news lately, and not just for being really weird if you think about ‘em, but because a new proposed bill in California could affect their sale in that state. It’s more complicated than a blurb can contain, but it all comes down to red dye No. 3, an ingredient in Skittles and lots of candies like it, which has been linked to all kinds of terrible things health-wise. Check out this excellent reporting from the Los Angeles Times (no, seriously, it’s a breezy read and we were thinking how cool the writer was the whole time we were in there) for more.
-Three cheers for cookbook author Isa Chandra Moskowitz, whose new book, Fake Meat, actually features vegan and vegetarian things you’d wanna eat. We don’t love much of the fake meat on the market, but we do love the idea of this book as longtime not-meat-eaters.
-Lastly in food news of the world this week, KFC (upon whom we were just dunking for their gross sandwiches) will soon have chicken nuggets on the menu again for the first time since before anyone can ever remember. This is great news for the idiots of the world who act like saying “chicky-nuggies” makes them funny and even better news for the contingent of kids who won’t eat anything else. You’ve been warned, America.
A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence
In the print edition of SFR this week, you shan’t find a food story. In its place, however, dazzling tales of books and artists and filmmakers! Huzzah!
Number of Letters Received
36
*But we really only cared about, like, 12 of them.
Most Helpful Tip of the Week (a barely edited letter from a reader)
“Just so you know, I could write your newsletter better!”
*Oh, cool! We’ve been feeling like taking some breaks now and then, so maybe you want to write up some samples and send them to theforkcaresnotforwhateveryouthinkyoucando.biz and we’ll see what’s up?
Actually Helpful Tip(s)
“You can grow whatever you want if you try hard enough!”
*Reader Margaret G. who is technically right, but we’re mainly putting it in here for whoever needs to hear it.
Doubled down and doubled over,
The Fork
