Taylor Swift’s Birthday Cake Was From Milk Bar

Welcome to Delicious or Distressing, where we rate recent food memes, videos, and other entertainment news. Last week we discussed Erewhon’s new collab with Balenciaga.

Taylor Swift (known to galavant about town) rang in her 34th in swanky fashion this week, flanked by celeb gal pals like Blake Lively, Selena Gomez, and Gigi Hadid. In one photo of note from the New York soiree—and it had us talking—gal pal Zoë Kravitz is carrying a Milk Bar cake to an awaiting Tay. A respectable choice of cake indeed, but a millennial-core choice at that. This assessment is only bolstered by the fact that the photo in question is oven-baked at 350 degrees in what can only be described as a 2012 Instagram filter, at once saturated and colorless. The 2010s are back, baby.

Also this week, Ikea in the UK released a giant turkey-sized meatball for limited supply for the holidays, and I’d like it, please. We got our hands on the Doritos-flavored liquor, and the jury weighed in with some choice words. Lastly, astronauts lost for eight months and then found a tomato in space.

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

​​This week Taylor Swift celebrated her 34th birthday with a Milk Bar cake at the 2010s hot spot Freemans in Manhattan, where the dinner was documented with vintage purpley Instagram-filtered photos. Might I remind you, she held this party in 2023. I think she’s so brave for this, and I mean that seriously. She’s embraced her elder millennial identity and its relics—the side bangs, the heeled booties, the crying laughing emoji, all of it! There is an element of self love and liberation on display here that many people including myself should strive toward. It makes me think of this exchange in her Time Person of the Year profile: “I tell Swift that the show made me think of a meme that says, “Do not kill the part of you that is cringe—kill the part of you that cringes.” “Yes!” she exclaims.” Taylor may be cringe, but she is free. Happy birthday, queen. 4.3/5 delicious. —Karen Yuan, culture editor

---

I’ve been thinking a lot about the giant Ikea meatball this week, namely that I would like to possess it. Ikea in the United Kingdom is doling out a limited quantity of the turkey-sized meatballs to lucky contest winners in the region, and for that reason my wish is in vain. Consider this, then, my plea to the Ikea powers that be: Bring the meatball to the United States. Or deliver one (just one!) to me personally—I will even travel within reason to retrieve it. I’m obsessed with the sheer premise of it, and I’d like to host a holiday feast dedicated to consuming it with my loved ones. I’m kept awake wondering why Ikea did this and how it accomplished it, and I won’t rest until I have (1) the answers or (2) the meatball itself. Ideally both. 5.2/5 delicious. —Li Goldstein, digital production assistant

---

We live in a world filled to the brim with unusual food brand collaborations. That’s why, when I first caught wind of a Doritos-flavored spirit, I assumed it was a flash-in-the-pan stunt, doomed to be forgotten like Van Leeuwen’s mac and cheese ice cream or the Supreme Oreos. But then I saw that the spirit company in question was Empirical, a BA favorite lead by two Noma alums. The $65 bottle has made some waves around the internet—the sentiment being cautiously if not downright positive. It officially sold out during the preorder phase, and bottles start shipping in January. The brand advertises “umami and tangy aromas of nacho cheese, moving to the deeper, corn-forward flavors of the chip to finish on a soft salty note.” I was intrigued.

Then I took a sip of the Doritos spirit. Opening the bottle revealed an aroma comparable to stale, old cheese left in a hot car for a day. A sip offered flavors such as gasoline, decaying flesh, and what I imagine the bubonic plague to have smelled like. The flavors lingered stubbornly on my tongue and in my nose, holding me in a vice grip of unbearable cheese/corn stink until I wanted to beg for death. “Abominable,” “unbearable,” and “oh yeah, it does sort of taste like corn a little at the end,” was how it was described around the BA office when I forced everyone to try a sip. Empirical, I have nothing but respect for your craft and your products, but I am rating this a 6/5 distressing. —Sam Stone, staff writer

---

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio returned Earthside in September after spending a record-setting 371 consecutive days on the International Space Station. I presume the man did loads of important science-y things, but he will best be remembered (by me) for inadvertently losing a tomato during his mission, which was grown as part of the VEG-05 experiment, exploring the growth of Red Robin tomatoes in space. The little guy was harvested by Rubio and secured in a plastic sandwich bag—until the astronaut lost the tomato after showing it off to some schoolkids during an event.

Though the space gardeners were instructed not to eat said tomatoes out of fear of fungal contamination, Rubio was nonetheless charged with gobbling down his prized produce. He claimed innocence, and even allegedly spent 18 to 20 hours searching for the missing tomato, which he swore he’d velcroed back in place (you know, gravity’s a whole thing out…there). Eight months later, astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli just revealed that the lost tomato has been found, clearing Rubio’s name. “We can exonerate him,” she said. More positive news: Given the semi-successful tomato crop, it looks like we can all depart this planetary hellhole imminently. Pack your bags! I’m rating this happy ending a 4.7/5 delicious. —Ali Francis, staff writer