Dear Mr. Boyardee

I was recently at our local Grocery Outlet – and I understand if a highfalutin' Somebody like y'all doesn't know what that is – but it's the kind of grocery store that well-intentioned products that just plain don't sell at a regular grocery store are delivered to when they near the end of their shelf life. Now, I also recognize, that as a Chef so highfalutin', so educated, so highly thought of that you changed your name from whatever your much-beloved parents gave you – Mario, or Lorenzo, or Vincenzo, or whatever – to Chef, because you just care that much about your cooking, you might not know what a grocery store itself is! Let me explain: it's kind of like a farmers market -- which is where I assume you get all the ingredients for your own personal food -- except instead of interacting with your local farmers, you interact with surly teens who are mad about existence and/or being forced into a union, and instead of carefully inspecting single eggplants that were grown with the utmost love and respect, you grab a plastic bag of broken carrots that were probably used to clear a field of pesticides before your precious local farmer used the land to grow the cleanest meadowfoam to make the most beautiful organic white honey the world has ever seen. At your farmers market, you probably buy handmade tagliatelle from an artisan pasta-maker grandmother named Edna who lovingly used her grandmother's rolling pin to roll out dough formed by mixing artesian spring water with hard red wheat flour grown by her husband and ground by her nephew. A grocery store is like that too, except we just pick whatever goddamn blue box of 99% rat-dropping-free ziti cranked out by a robot that's being protested by an out-of-work mechanic as we speak and pitch it into the cart because goddamnit that woman doesn't have her mask covering her nose and we're in the middle of a fucking global pandemic, get me the fuck out of this store, it is a plague pit, FUCK WHY DID I EVEN LEAVE MY HOUSE --

Anyway. It's kinda like your farmers market.

So, peon that I am, I'm at my local discount, bump n' dent, grocery store, and what should I find but your Very Own "Throwback Recipe PREMIUM Spaghetti and Meatballs in Tomato Sauce." There it was, on the shelf, about to expire, priced so low that I'm sure someone in the supply chain lost money on the deal, even if it was just the logistics company (narrator: it's never the logistics company). It had your name on it, Mr. Boyardee! It was PREMIUM. And it was cheap. I had to try it. I shoved two blue boxes of radiatore to the side and threw them into my cart.

Then I forgot about them for a while. Sorry. As I said, fucking pandemic, y'know?

But then, one day, when I'd been on Zoom and Teams and Hangouts meetings for hours, and didn't manage to get my head above the water of virtual meetings until, like, 2:30 PM, on a rare day when my wife wasn't home to make fun of me, I opened the cabinet, and there, there you were, like an old friend, an old enemy, in your faded yellow jacket, there you were, Mr. Boyardee.

I know that you, personally, Mr. Boyardee, care about slow food, that you care about your farmers markets, that you care about that cow named Bessie who you made sure to pet twice before she was turned into hamburger for you, but in that moment, I admit, I faltered. I cracked your can of spaghetti, dumped it into a bowl, and microwaved it for, ironically, 2:30.

Now comes the point, Mr. Boyardee, when, I fear, I need to ask you a few questions. The main ingredients in this can of spaghetti and meatballs were tomato sauce, meat, spaghetti, and "cheese." I know you are a gourmand, Mr. B, so I know you know from quality, and I am almost entirely certain that the only species of foodcrop that came anywhere near that can was zea mays, or, as you call it, corn. The "tomato" sauce? Tasted like corn. The "meat" balls? Tasted like corn. The "wheat" noodles? Tasted like corn. The "cheese?" I don't even know what kind of corn it tasted like, but it tasted like some weird industrial corn and coal dust byproduct. This can of spaghetti and meatballs was a miracle in its own right. Not only because it didn't spoil, but because neither I -- nor the Olmec who originally cultivated it -- could dream that one could do SO many things with the humble kernel of maize.

I will not ask you about the "cheese." There are things man was not meant to know.

No, what I want to ask you, Mr. Boyardee, is "throwback" for whom? I understand nostalgia, but no one could possibly be nostalgic for insipid, slimy, gummy noodles; no one could possibly be nostalgic for the taste of acidic, red corn sauce that has the consistency of watered down tapioca pudding. Nor, oh lord, nor for the meatballs. Lord. It's a "throwback" recipe that contains "More Meat?" First of all, Chef, let's talk about consistency in recipes and branding. If it's throwback, it's throwback, fine, but if you're going to get all Kylo Ren and insist on MORE meat, on MORE cheese, are you really making a throwback? Or are you acting like a real George Lucas and adding effects to something that was perfectly made for its time, even if it wasn't perfect?

So who, Mr. Boyardee, are you throwing back to? There are not enough people still alive who remember the Great Depression for a good target demographic, and even if there were, that's a terrible demographic to market to and expect any sort of profit margin, unless you're counting on them buying cases of your fancy-ass corn byproduct to shove into the basement and forget about for 30 years. And if you're somehow targeting millennials, and think they're gonna be happy with MORE meat... meaning six dime-size "meat" balls per can that somehow both taste carbonated and shatter into jaw-puncturing shards of corn-ass-tasting bottom-shelf meat when you smack them with your molars... Well, Mr. Boyardee, you need to get out and talk to the kids more.

Since you seem intent on channeling Mr. Lucas, Mr. Boyardee, let me give you a spot of advice. Stick to your farmers markets, and rest on the laurels of your "original" recipe that you sell in the grocery stores of today. Don't try to make "Chef Boyardee Spaghetti And Meatballs Episode 2: The Revenge of the Corns." Just step back. Just... step away from the spatula. There... put it down. It's ok. It's ok. You're gonna be just fine.

Sincerely,

Alex Parise

[Originally published 11/02/2020]