Welcome to Delicious or Distressing, where we rate recent food memes, videos, and other entertainment news. Last week we discussed Yale’s very gourmet breakfast offerings.
To the Wawa fans in the room with us today: I’m sorry to report that Wawa pizza is, by all accounts, quite bad. The convenience chain—famous for its hoagies, beloved in New Jersey and Pennsylvania—entered the pizza arena this summer to absolutely blistering reviews. “Wawa, I love you, but your new pizza is trash,” even says local outlet NJ.com. (Hilarious headline, I might add.) We tried it to see for ourselves if the whispers (or, rather, screams) of Wawa’s infamous pizza flop were indeed true. In any case, I respect the risk Wawa took, and I only wish it the best in future saucy endeavors.
Also this week, Travis Kelce, newly anointed father of the Taylor Swift fandom, is launching a line of frozen meals at Walmart. A man also faked a heart attack to avoid paying his restaurant bill no less than a whopping 20 times before he was arrested.
Read more below on this week’s food news around the internet.
Beloved Wawa just launched pizza, to very bad reviews
I first heard of Wawa’s new pizza after watching a viral commercial featuring a few members of the infamous MTV show Jersey Shore (Mike the Situation, Vinny, and DJ Pauly D, if you must know), arriving at a Wawa in a vintage muscle car and chanting, “Wawa has pizza? Wawa has pizza.” As a true Jersey girl, fan of the debauched reality show, and devoted lover of Wawa, I had to try it, despite the overwhelmingly negative reviews it has received thus far.
What I saw when I opened my box of plain cheese pizza was something greasy, overwhelmingly drowning in thick mozzarella cheese, and a little burnt. When I took a bite, my wide-eyed curiosity suddenly dimmed and I was hit with a grim reality: I shouldn’t have expected anything beyond gas station pizza. The sauce-to-cheese ratio was all off—not enough sauce to counterbalance the saltiness and overwhelming volume of the cheese. I couldn’t even finish the crust, which itself was virtually flavorless. That being said, I don’t go to Wawa for premium-quality food—I go to Wawa for the vibes. Personally, I wouldn’t order the pizza again, but in any case, it’s the kind of pizza better suited after a night out at the Jersey Shore to fulfill a greasy late-night craving. 3/5 distressing for the pizza, but 5/5 delicious for my undying love for Wawa. —Julia Duarte, designer
Travis Kelce is launching a line of frozen meals at Walmart
Travis Kelce, one half of America’s most monetizable couple, is launching a line of frozen meals. While Taylor Swift has visited Via Carota and inspired Heinz ranch, Kelce is disrupting the food world with Travis Kelce’s Kitchen, a slew of refrigerated entries now available at Walmart. I admit I have never wondered about the contents of Kelce’s kitchen, but now I must. Apparently, it features a lot of Kansas City barbecue: The frozen meals include burnt ends, sliced brisket, and baked beans. “Kelce aims to share his passion for great food, especially the hearty BBQ that Kansas City is famous for,” a Walmart representative told TODAY.com. Now, critics would say this product and its timing during peak Traylor feels like a shameless cash grab, but the Kelce-Swift PR machine is a powerful force, and I have been expertly manipulated into finding the two’s shenanigans generally benign. Let Kelce have his folksy frozen food line, I say. Maybe it’ll find its way into a Taylor Swift lyric one day. 3.9/5 delicious. —Karen Yuan, culture editor
This man faked a heart attack 20 times to avoid paying the bill, and just got arrested
Crime is bad, but at a certain point you have to respect a hustle. That’s why I'm fascinated by the story of a Lithuanian guy in Spain who has been faking heart attacks to skip out on the bill for literal years—even if I wouldn’t invite him out to dinner myself. It looks like the bills he’s refusing to pay are, for the most part, under $100, but I still find myself impressed by his commitment. When he was most recently confronted with his unpaid bill, he reportedly told staff he “felt ‘unwell’ and threw himself to the ground,” according to the New York Post. Coincidentally, that is exactly what I do whenever I’m asked to do literally anything I don’t want to do. It’s never gotten me out of a bill, but it has worked when convincing my boyfriend to run to the bodega to grab us a snack. I’m rating this one a slippery 3.1/5 delicious. —Sam Stone, staff writer
