Chuck E. Cheese & Applebee's are catfishing local food lovers

Issue 154: His full name is Charles Entertainment Cheese. Let us never forget.

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Read yesterday’s dispatch: Why it's so tough to get produce from farms to food banks

If you’ve been browsing the vast expanses of delivery apps like Grubhub lately, you may have noticed a new place pop up in your neighborhood: Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings. I’m here to tell you that this might not be a local eatery, but rather Chuck E. Cheese in disguise. Yes, that Chuck E. Cheese. A classic catfish, luring us toward love by means of a fictional online persona.

For those who have scrubbed the weird Chuck E. Cheese animatronic robot band from their memory (oh, how I envy you), let me remind you: Pasqually P. Pieplate (yep) is the allegedly human drummer slash Neapolitan pizza chef of Chuck E. Cheese lore. A reddit user in Philadelphia discovered this scheme when she ordered pizza on Grubhub from “Pasqually’s,” only to find it had actually come from Chuck E. Cheese. (This is made even weirder by the fact that apparently there is a real, non-Chuck E. Cheese pizza restaurant called Pasqually’s in West Philly).

(photo courtesy VICE. Pasqually is on the far right.)

This happened about a month ago, but it’s worth paying attention to today because, it turns out, our mouse Charles isn’t the only one pulling these shenanigans. Yesterday, we learned that Applebee’s, which I similarly can’t imagine would be anyone’s first choice (or… maybe is the perfect mood to match a global pandemic??), is pretending to be called “Neighborhood Wings.” A truly perfect nondescript name, if a nefarious one. It’s the “How Do You Do, Fellow Kids” meme of chain restaurants. (For reference:)

Sublime.

But here’s the thing: I submit to you that this is not just silly; it’s actively destructive. As we know, local restaurants are struggling to survive Covid-19. If you genuinely want Chuck E. Cheese pizza delivered to you, fine. I won’t judge you out loud. But if you’re trying to support your neighbors and are unwittingly lured away by a tricksterish corporation, that seems problematic to me.

So. Order from genuinely local restaurants. And while you’re at it, in the words of New Yorker writer Helen Rosner, “pick up the damn phone” instead of going through the apps, so your local favorites aren’t slammed with fees. Better for them — and better for you, because you won’t accidentally end up with Chuck E’s pizza.

Bonus link: Make sure you’re actually calling the restaurant’s direct line instead of the fake number Grubhub generates to make more money, because that’s a real thing they do. Lovely.

Before we go: an update in the Alison Roman fracas. (To catch you up to speed, in an recent interview, Alison Roman (a New York Times cooking columnist who had been insanely popular but criticized in some circles for whitewashing “ethnic” recipes) called out two women of color, Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo, for commercializing their names as brands. It was an odd remark because Alison Roman seemed to be doing something similar — in fact, Teigen was supposed to executive-produce a new show Roman had in the works.)

Last night, per the Daily Beast, the New York Times put Alison Roman’s cooking column “on temporary leave,” which sparked some interesting reactions on Twitter that I’ll share here. This is not an exhaustive roundup; just remarks from smart people that are worth thinking about — about who the media gatekeepers are, who gets to be the judge of what reactions are “excessive,” etc.

Aminatou Sow @aminatou

Easy to single out one person, who has apologized and will continue to deal with the consequences of her actions (as she should!) but NYT cooking like all of media, is not an ecosystem that exists outside of white supremacy.

pfpicardi @pfpicardi

A food writer who apologized for the wrong things she said has lost her job, but Bret Stephens is still writing for the Opinion section? Ok.

Max Tani @maxwelltani

I realize we've moved past this by about 50 media news cycles, but an NYT spox confirms that Alison Roman's column is "on temporary leave." A Roman piece that was supposed to be published earlier this month was shelved after the Teigen/Kondo saga https://t.co/c5TfQPz8ai

pfpicardi @pfpicardi

It also seems to me like if the NYT wanted to actually do something to improve this situation, they’d actually hire more editors and writers of color in the Cooking section? Since that was a key takeaway of this whole thing.

subtle ched @shitfoodblogger

All your fake outrage that someone was held accountable when others weren’t...things change, fuckers. And to say the action taken was excessive has to be really fucking demoralizing to people who have fought to have a voice.

jgz @jennygzhang

fine: her comments were bad, every part of this news cycle was bad, chrissy will be fine, alison will be fine, br*t stephens is still is the worst but that’s a separate jurisdiction entirely, now she’s going to get a hero’s welcome when she comes back in a month with a new recipe

o s a y i @osayiendolyn

If the time/money invested in pushing these white women figures to the forefront was invested in people of color we’d have a a very different lineage of “mainstream” food personalities. Imo, that’s the takeaway from this nonsense. AR is the smoke. But there’s a FIRE below!

chrissy teigen @chrissyteigen

@rock_hawk @Olivianuzzi @bariweiss @alisoneroman I hope we can laugh about it one day but I’m not happy with the NYT leave so she def can’t laugh about it yet. It just sucks in every way.

OK, that’s all. See you tomorrow! Until we meet again, if you like this newsletter, please don’t keep the secret to yourself! I give you my permission to share it: