Erewhon and Balenciaga Drop Very Expensive Merch, Naturally

Welcome to Delicious or Distressing, where we rate recent food memes, videos, and other entertainment news. Last week we discussed a woman finding a chopped finger in her Chopt salad.

A recent Roman Empire of mine—yes, one can consider multiple, at once—is this $42 slab of Erewhon blueberry pie. The hot Los Angeles supermarket chain, known to attract dewy-faced influencers and west coast wellness gurus, is as much a luxury brand as it is a food purveyor, evidenced by its blasphemous prices. With this truth in mind, it’s no surprise that it’s chosen to collab with fellow luxury brand Balenciaga on a line of merch that includes a $725 tee shirt and an opaquely black beverage laced with and hued by charcoal.

Also this week, Bradley Cooper served Philly cheesesteaks out of a food truck to a crowd of New Yorkers—among them rumored girlfriend Gigi Hadid and ex-girlfriend Irina Shayk. A woman, after hurling a burrito bowl at a Chipotle worker, was sentenced to fast-food work to repent. White Claw, in its latest attempt to innovate on its signature seltzer, just made normal seltzer. Is capitalism regressing? (No: See $42 blueberry pie.)

Read more below on this week’s food news around the internet.

Last November, Balenciaga enraged the internet with an ad campaign featuring children clutching bondage-clad teddy bears. Now, still clamoring for redemption, the fashion powerhouse unveiled its pre-fall 2024 runway show, which dropped hints of a collab with Erewhon—LA’s luxe market known for its celebrity-endorsed juice bar featuring partnerships with the likes of Emma Chamberlain and Hailey Bieber. The $725 Balenciaga x Erewhon tee makes a grim kind of sense: food and bev is as much a status signal these days as luxury fashion.

For a less expensive taste of the collab, you can drink a $14 bottle of what looks like toxic sludge and reeks of eau de desperate-for-cultural-relevance. The Balenciaga superfood smoothie is an Instagrammable, obsidian concoction of apple, lemon, ginger, cinnamon, organic maple syrup, and (of course) charcoal. LA-goers: Try it and let me know the verdict? Meanwhile, I’m dubbing this grocercore revelation a tepid 3.5/5 on the distressing scale. —Ali Francis, staff writer

Bradley Cooper, to Philadelphia what Ben Affleck is to Boston (white male actor mascot, that is) slung Philly cheesesteaks out of a food truck in New York this week. For me, this was a delicious event by many measures. The celebrity-LARPing-as-service-worker is one of 2023’s odd archetypes, and we’ve mostly rolled our eyes at the stunty concept. But unlike Prince William lowering himself to the plebes to serve food out of a truck or David Letterman pretending to be a grocery store worker at Hy-Vee in Iowa, Bradley’s cheesesteak endeavor feels more true to his Philly roots—after all, the man wears an Eagles jersey like a second skin in Silver Linings Playbook. He’s also genuinely starting a new food company with Danny DiGiampietro, of Philadelphia’s Angelo’s Pizzeria, called Danny and Coops. Perhaps the PR machine has me on a tight leash, but I sign off on this event as acceptably authentic. Even better: Not only did supermodel and rumored new girlfriend Gigi Hadid make an appearance to cop a sandwich, donning little black shades and a hat, so did ex (and supermodel) Irina Shayk. Flames old and new reuniting at the cheesesteak truck—that’s 5/5 delicious. —Li Goldstein, digital production assistant

In a wild Chipotle showdown in Parma, Ohio, 39-year-old customer Rosemary Hayne took her burrito bowl grievances to the extreme, tossing the loaded dish at staffer Emily Russell. The entire chaotic episode, caught on video by a bystander and shared on Reddit, shows Hayne hollering at Russell for at least a minute before launching her food like a human catapult. Vigilant Chipotle patrons swiftly captured Hayne’s license plate and alerted the police, who arrested her at home on September 5. Judge Timothy Gilligan didn’t hold back: “This is not ‘Real Housewives’ of Parma,” he said during sentencing.