Taco Pizza and The "Nutty Bar" Conspiracy
The Haterade Mailbag Returns Again, vol. 2: The Sequeling
Welcome back to another edition of the Haterade Mailbag, in which my five loyal readers feed me questions like an irascible baby bird.
The irascible baby bird is on deadline this week, so I’m just going to dive in:
Taco pizza. I don’t mean an “upscale,” “reimagined” taco pizza, I mean the chain-style taco pizza of my Iowan youth. I mean a paste-y refried bean base with toppings that strain credulity—“taco meat,” crumbly shards of Doritos that stab the roof of your mouth, cubed Roma tomatoes that taste like the refrigerator, shredded iceberg lettuce wilting atop a heated floor of cheese, and packets of rust-red taco sauce to drizzle over the top. This is heaven, to me.1 It’s a grocery cart of textures that changes over the course of its eating. It’s the Melting Pot in action, in that the cheese is melted and you have probably consumed pot before eating it. It belongs to no season—to every season—to every food group. It’s agreeable and silly and easy to sneer at, which is to say: the taco pizza is me.
Well, if you’re inviting me, Doritos and shredded iceberg. For most sensible people, though, I think you’ll want to supply, at minimum:
Pepperoni (the small, curly cups, not the silver-dollar slices). I’m told people call these “roni cups,” but I refuse. If you can find a natural casing pepperoni, that’s the gold standard. Slice it a little thicker than you think is wise.
Anchovies. Yes, they’re polarizing, but the people at the Good Pole really fucking love anchovies on pizza. Split the oil-packed filets in half—think “tenders”—and pat them dry. That’s it.
Sliced jalapeños. I prefer sautéed fresh slices for pizza, but pickled are fine.
Garlic. Raw slices are easier, but if you want to be fancy without too much fuss, roast a whole head of garlic and let people yeet some of the sweet, squishy cloves onto their own pie.2
A Soft Red Thing. This might be fragile strips of roasted red pepper or crinkly commas of sun-dried tomato. I’m partial to the former, but this is for color and texture as much as taste.
One Weird Cheese from your Cheese Bag (in addition to your house pizza blend).
Alternate pizza for fellow food weirdos: mortadella and banana peppers. Hit the mortadella with a little olive oil or cooking spray before you pop the pizza in the oven so the edges crisp.
Here’s a mortadella pie and a Detroit-style pepperoni I made recently. The crust on the former looks bad and I won’t pretend otherwise, but the toppings were solid.
You’ll notice my list above omits some of the obvious classics—sausage, mushroom, onion. All of these toppings are fine, and you were probably going to include them anyway. But they’re just not as sexy (unless you have a Mushroom Guy™).
Also, I restrained myself and didn’t list ranch dressing as a required topping because I am making Progress.
Voiceover: This is the Midwest, Andrea. You know what to do. Moving on:
Ratatouille might not be the best Pixar movie of all time, but it’s definitely the best restaurant movie of all time. Ratatouille punctured the “chef as singular male genius” myth years before food media cottoned on. The whole point of the film is that lionizing a single Great Man is a fool’s errand, as Great Men are controlled by rats. Thomas Keller? A fleshy mech with a groundhog upstairs. René Redzepi? Helmed by a vole.
Also, the movie features a character named “Alfredo Linguini” despite being set in France. That’s commitment.3
Some spicy takes from David here, better known by his street name, DaveOne. I’m going to deal with each of them in turn.
The Nutty Bungle. The “Nutty Bars” to “Nutty Buddies” name change is both fascinating and a little mysterious. At first, I wondered whether they had ever been called “Nutty Bars.” Was this another collective false memory, like the “Berenstein Bears” or the film Shazaam! featuring Sinbad?4
But no: according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s database, McKee Foods—the company behind Little Debbies in general and Nutty Buddies in particular—still owns the “Nutty Bars” trademark, which they’ve held since 1988.5 They didn’t file a trademark for “Nutty Buddy” until 2008, when the financial crisis reminded all of us to cherish our Nuttiest Buddies.
Curiously, another company that makes “genital protection devices” has held a trademark to “The Nutty Buddy” (emphasis mine) since 2007. McKee should have stuck with Bars, in my opinion.
I couldn’t find any rationale for the name change online, so I called up the Consumer Affairs line at Little Debbie. This is where the chocolate coating thickens: the kind lady on the phone told me they still manufacture boxes under both names.
“We found out that people down South called them ‘Nutty Buddies,’ so that’s why we made the switch,” she said.
“So this is, like, a Mason-Dixon line thing? You sell ‘Nutty Bars’ in the North and ‘Nutty Buddies’ in the South?”
She hesitated. “I don’t think it’s like that.”
Friends across the U.S., check your grocery aisles and write in. I’m determined to get to the bottom of this. I’m going to make a map.
The Keebler Conundrum. Agreed on this point. I take no pleasure in saying this, but Fudge Stripes are one of the Great American Cookies. The base layer of chocolate keeps the crumbly shortbread in line, and the fudge stripes soften it up just enough so that you get bend and snap in the same cookie. They’re cheap, they travel well, and they’re thin enough that you can eat your way through half a tray before pausing to consider the implications.
The Donut Ultimatum. I, too, have a hard time eating a lot of sugar first thing in the morning, but I reject the premise of this question on the grounds that it veers dangerously close to Breakfast Food fascism. Breakfast is a time, not a culinary category.
That said, for me, donuts are a 10 AM, second-round-of-coffee snack or a 3 AM, drunk-and-hearing-the-distant-thunder-of-my-future-misery snack.
Finally, to David’s last question: Haterade is a genital protection device.
NEXT:
If the chef in question is Nicholas Cage, yes. Pig is now out in theaters, and I will go see it with any of you weirdos because the trailer made me howl. If you haven’t watched it yet, treat yourself. I’ve been muttering “I’m looking for a truffle pig” in a Cage-ian bass for the past month.
Real Deal truffles are never going to go out of style: rich people love them, French people love them, and chefs love shaving them over bowls with a hardwood artisanal plane while they ~manifest~ swimming in a rooftop pool of your money.
But the cheap, truffle-derived products that were ubiquitous a decade ago (oils, pomades, lubes) have been unfashionable for a while. They’re rarely made with actual truffles, and most fine-dining chefs won’t touch them. Truffle oil in particular feels like the culinary world’s answer to that weird subset of remaindered designer goods you can only find at TJ Maxx—Gucci yoga mats, Ralph Lauren scrunchies. Who asked for this?
I try to let people like what they like, but truffle fries or truffle mac on a restaurant menu in 2021 is a red flag that no one in the kitchen has anything to say.
OK, this is getting a bit unwieldy, so I’m going to wrap up. Apologies to those whose questions I didn’t get to, but save ‘em up for a future edition of MAILBAG RETURNS AGAIN: THE SEQUEL.
I guess there’s room for one more:
Why, thank you for asking! It is eligible, and if you are so moved to nominate me, you can do so at this highly convenient link. I write for The Pitch semi-regularly, so I get why this seems weird. I think it’s probably OK for the following reasons:
I’m a freelancer (not a Pitch employee).
This is a Reader’s Choice award, so Pitch staff have zero say in who’s nominated or who wins.
Haterade isn’t affiliated with The Pitch or any other newspaper, which is why I can get away with this digital arson. No one edits me, baby! I’m a loose cannon!
See you next time, friends. I’ve got some terrible ideas brewing.
If you’d like to support the spottiest/shoddiest newsletter in KC, subscribe, share, or send to a friend. You can also donate to the Haterade Museum of Regional Snacks: @lizcookkc on Venmo or $lizcookkc on CashApp. And if you have questions for a future Mailbag, drop them in the comments or send them in a tweet.
I am allowed one taco pizza per year on my birthday, because no one else in my life likes them. I haven’t found any local spots that make them with the Doritos, though, which I think is a critical component—if you know where I can find this in KC, drop a recommendation in the comments.
In case anyone needs instructions for this: just slice the top off a whole head of garlic until you can see the exposed garlic necks, dribble some oil into those neck holes, wrap the whole thing in foil, and toss it a 375 Fahrenheit oven for 40 to 45 minutes.
A little disappointed we didn’t see Alfredo in last week’s Euro final.
How many people will message me to say “that’s called The Mandela Effect” before they get to the footnotes? LET’S FIND OUT!
Curiously, they let the trademark for the singular “Nutty Bar” expire
Casey's still uses 'taco chips' on their pizzas, as they have since the 1980s: https://www.caseys.com/menu/pizza/taco-pizza/p/8153
Also, this footnote broke my heart: "I am allowed one taco pizza per year on my birthday, because no one else in my life likes them." I stopped reading immediately to reply. I'm sure your friendships with the Earl of Snootingham and Lady Fancypantaloons are rich and rewarding, but I'm afraid someday you'll be on your deathbed regretting that you didn't have taco pizza at least quarterly. Can you start bringing it as a side dish for Thanksgiving? Frozen on a stick to a pool party? This is Liz "I invented garlic bread lip balm" Cook we're talking about! You are not bound by the laws of man, science, or god!
The Other Place uses Doritos on their taco pizza!