If you open up a brown paper bag of Chinese takeout in the United States, you will almost certainly find a handful of familiar condiment packets tossed into the bottom. Alongside the standard packets of hot mustard and soy sauce will be a bunch of orange to yellow gel labeled simply, Duck Sauce. Every day, … Read more
A modern genre of consumer commentary revolves around taking mundane facts and making them the next big outrage moment. A common premise is to treat normal commercial kitchen safeguards as deliberate corporate crimes. In these food exposés, standard casual dining operations are routinely reframed as calculated corporate conspiracies, like the viral claim that Olive Garden … Read more
During the mid-1950s, Campbell’s Soup began running bizarre full-page ads in major magazines. The ads pictured an elegant old-fashioned glass filled with ice cubes. The amber liquid from a can of Campbell’s Bouillon (Beef Broth) is being poured over the ice. The headline boldly commands: “Soup on the Rocks!” When modern people stumble onto articles … Read more
American highways are dotted with fast-food signs, promising consistent and familiar food for travelers. On those highways, strange travelers appear. They’re looking for fast-food but they bypass those fast-food exists, continuing on their strange, solitary quest. These retro-fast-food pilgrims are armed with childhood memories of brown-and-orange fiberglass booths or distinctive paper-wrapped burgers. They will drive … Read more
Few desserts carry as much cultural affection across the American South as butter pecan ice cream. It has long been a signature ice cream flavor of the Southern states. In recent years, however, a viral narrative has taken hold across the internet, asserting that butter pecan ice cream was born out of direct racial defiance. … Read more
Most people know Willy Wonka as a fictional candy mogul from Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its iconic 1971 film adaptation starring Gene Wilder. But for generations of kids, the “Willy Wonka Candy Company” was a real company, responsible for childhood favorites like Nerds, Gobstoppers, Runts, and Laffy Taffy. What … Read more