Welcome to Delicious or Distressing, where we rate recent food memes, videos, and other entertainment news. Last week we discussed Taylor Swift’s ‘ketchup and seemingly ranch.’
Cher, the multihyphenate that she is, can do it all. She can sing, obvi. She can act! It only tracks that she can also be the face of a gelato brand. Watch out Talenti: There’s a new competitor on the market, aptly and perfectly and deliciously named Cherlato. In interviews, Cher shared (Chered?) that she’s a longtime ice cream fan and would hunt down the ice cream truck as a child to partake. In full-circle fashion, Cher’s own gelato trucks—decorated with photos of her face, and also smaller photos of her face sticking out of ice cream cones—are hitting LA’s streets, serving up gold-plated cones and other campy offerings.
Also this week, an innocent TikToker was horrified to discover she’d been eating raw salmon—decidedly not lox—on her bagels for a full week. Le Creuset is selling a 157-piece kitchenware at Costco for many thousands of dollars, and we have to wonder who its target audience is—both economically and in terms of cupboard space. Lastly, the disease of inflation has afflicted Girl Scout Cookies, which are getting more expensive this year.
Read more about Cherlato and other food news around the internet below.
Cher has a new gelato line called Cherlato
Sure, it’s only offered by a single truck in Los Angeles, but Cherlato is already national news. The new brand is a “culmination of a decades-long journey to find the freshest and most amazing ice-creams in the world,” according to a Cherlato Instagram post. Cher and New Zealand–based ice cream brand Giapo apparently “brainstormed, taste-tested, experimented and eventually conceived Cherlato” just for us, her adoring fans. Yes, mother is so good to us. Speaking of mothers, one of the flavors is named Cher’s Mom’s Cheesecake. (It’s based on Cher’s mom’s cheesecake.) Other flavors: Chocolate XO Cher!, which features onyx dark chocolate, cacao nibs, and freeze-dried raspberries; Breakfast At Cher’s Coffee & Donuts, which is made with coffee beans from Chiapas, Mexico; for vegans, Venice Vibes combines mango, tajín, and ancient Aztec chamoy. Do you believe in ice cream after love? I do. I am dying to one day spot this Cher-stickered truck rumbling down a street in my neighborhood, playing a tinny recording of her contralto tones. 4.3/5 delicious. —Karen Yuan, culture editor
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You can buy a 157-piece Le Creuset set from Costco for $4,500
Le Creuset fans who also have completely empty kitchens who are also Costco members who also have $4,499.99 to spare, have I got highly specific news for you: Costco is exclusively selling a 157-piece set of Le Creuset cookware for that very amount. It includes three Dutch ovens, six frying pans and saucepans, two stockpots, a whistling kettle, and a French press. A gravy boat. A pie bird. A bunch of utensils, including spatulas, ladles, wooden spoons, and measuring cups. Two mysterious cookbooks. “Wine-related items.” A 32-piece dinner set. Eight mugs. Many baking dishes. All colored in Le Creuset’s signature Cerise Red. This set doesn’t seem to be intended for a restaurant kitchen; incredibly, it’s for home cooks. The set currently has zero reviews on the site. Is it a trap? Is it the fully branded and merchandised kitchen of our dreams? How many roasting dishes does a home cook really need? That’s girl math for you. All you need is a large entrance in your home through which a lift gate truck can deliver a pallet. 4.2/5 delicious; you get to keep the pallet. —K.Y.
Someone on TikTok ate raw salmon on a bagel thinking it was lox
You know when you find out as a grown adult that you’ve been saying a word wrong your whole life? (For algae, I’ve been saying al-ghee when everyone else seems to say al-jee.) It’s embarrassing, but as the internet has come to teach me, it could always be worse. Earlier this week, one TikToker named Sandra was filmed by her roommate Twitt using a regular hunk of supermarket salmon as if it were lox, sawing off hunks of pale pink flesh to stuff in her bagel. Twitt “was like, ‘Is this sushi grade?’” Sandra tells her dad on the phone. “And I was like, ‘What’s that?’” She’s dressed in a business casual power suit fanning her face as the hacked fish sits on a wooden cutting board. Naturally, the commenters are concerned for Sandra’s well-being. “Take home girl to the hospital right neowwwwwww!!!” writes one user. Meanwhile, others are impressed by her thrift. “She was prob like ‘why is everyone complaining [salmon is] expensive?’ I can buy one piece and eat it all week,’” comments another. Though Sandra is probably going to be fine, I must beg the obvious question here: How did she not realize those slimy slices in her bagel were, in fact, not lox? I feel for her. 4.2/5 distressing. —Ali Francis, staff writer
Girl Scout cookies are getting more expensive this year
How much would you pay for a box of Thin Mints? Like with all things inflation, Girl Scout cookies will be getting a little bit more expensive this cookie season. This isn’t the first time that the cookies have gotten a price hike. In 2014 and 2015, the price went up from $4 to $5. This year, all cookies are likely going to be $6. From where I see it, I spend $6 on much lower-value things in life (an overpriced oat latte, an impulse buy from TikTok that was not as advertised, or a singular slice of coffee cake, to name a few.) The way I see it, $6 for a box of cookies is still a pretty good deal when a four-pack of cookies from Levain is $29 plus the cost of shipping. Are the two just as hyped? Yes, IMO. Are they the same quality? No. But by my calculation, you’re getting more cookies for your money with Girl Scouts— plus, who can say no to a Brownie in a sash? As a former Girl Scout, I’ll still be getting my box or two of Samoas from my local troop. 1.05/5 distressing —Urmila Ramakrishnan, associate director of social media