The Super Bowl of Eating

Thanksgiving is really the Super Bowl of Eating, but the Super Bowl is up there as a big eating event.  Before I get to the food, I’m looking forward to the game.  I have lost so much interest in the NFL in the last decade, but I’ve enjoyed the playoffs (other than having a Monday night playoff game).  Eight of the last ten Super Bowls have featured at least one of the Patriots, Jim Harbaugh, Pete Carroll, or Tom Brady.  The only ones that didn’t were Super Bowl L (I refuse to not use the Roman numeral) and Super Bowl LIV.  But those other eight games had the possibility of making me miserable (it was guaranteed in the case of Super Bowl XLIX).  Super Bowl XLVI turned out to be amazing, but there have been far too many Super Bowls recently that I haven’t been able to enjoy.  But this year, there’s no terrible outcome other than a bad game.  There’s nobody I despise and both teams have one Notre Dame player.  I love Los Angeles, but I like the idea of the Dodgers being the most recent Los Angeles team to win a championship.  And the Rams’ Notre Dame player is Ben Skowronek, who only spent one year at Notre Dame as a graduate transfer (I’m guessing he didn’t finish a graduate degree).  The Bengals have Khalid Kareem, who spent four years at Notre Dame (I’m assuming he graduated) and recorded 13 sacks.  So I’m rooting for the Bengals, but I won’t be too disappointed if the Rams win.

When it comes to watching the Super Bowl, I know I’m different from most people.  I don’t like watching the game with a lot of people.  I want to be able to watch it and pay attention without being distracted at a party.  But I do like combining good food with football.  So let’s talk about designing a Super Bowl food and beverage program.

I’ll start with the easiest part, which is my Super Bowl beer.  Last year I didn’t drink anything because of an issue with my blood test from my physical a couple of weeks earlier.  I ended up having to have two more blood tests and two other tests and seeing two more doctors, but everything turned out fine.  I just had my physical this year and everything came back fine so I’ll definitely be enjoying some beer with this Super Bowl.  George Costanza dresses by mood and I drink by mood.  I love Sam Adams, but I couldn’t drink any Sam Adams whenever the Patriots were in the Super Bowl.  I would try to find some beer from the city of their opponent.  But this year’s beer selection is easy.  Everybody associates Sam Adams with Boston, but much of their beer is brewed in Cincinnati.  I’m rooting for the Bengals.  I love football in the snow, but I think of football as a fall sport.  The start of football marks the end of summer and the end of football marks the beginning of the long dark winter in sports until college basketball conference tournaments (which is made much more bearable this year thanks to the Winter Olympics and the this being the latest Super Bowl ever).  Orange is one of the Bengals’ colors and I completely missed out on Sam Adams Octoberfest in 2020 because of the pandemic.  I did not miss out on Octoberfest this year.  I still have some that’s good until April.  It was probably brewed in Cincinnati and the label is orange so I’ll be drinking Octoberfest.

As for food, I’ve been listening to the Ringer Food podcast.  They went through the signature foods for each playoff city.  It was tacos for Los Angeles and Skyline chili for Cincinnati.  Tacos aren’t a terrible food option for football.  I’d go burrito over taco most of the time, but a burrito is a much bigger commitment and I’d rather not make that commitment when there’s lots of other food to eat.  I’m not interested in Skyline chili.  They did a bracket of all the playoff food and it came down to Buffalo wings against the Philly cheesesteak.  If you’re going to have a sandwich, a Philly cheesesteak is a really good option, but I think the Buffalo wing is pretty much the perfect football food.  For their bracket, they first narrowed it down to four AFC cities and four NFC cities and then got the food delivered from Gold Belly.  For Green Bay, it was bratwurst with cheese curds. Hot dogs are the classic baseball food. I would agree that bratwursts are more of a football food. I definitely had some brats tailgating at Notre Dame as a student, but I’d take a hot dog over a brat (one of the best hot dogs I ever had was tailgating before the USC game in 2011, unfortunately that turned out to be the highlight of the day). Anyway, I considered getting something from Gold Belly for the Super Bowl, but I opted not to.  Back in the spring of 2020, I got some Chicago deep dish “pizza” delivered from Gold Belly.  It was good, but I don’t think it was the same quality that you’d actually get in Chicago.  Some other foods might travel better, but the prices for things other than pizza are pretty high.  And of course, I can get actual pizza (not deep dish “pizza”) from many local establishments for a cheaper price.  But back to Buffalo wings, I had them in Buffalo last summer and I could definitely get Buffalo wings that are just as good from some places around here.

So what do I want to eat for the Super Bowl?  Well, I do live in the Pizza Belt.  The great thing about living in the Pizza Belt is that so many places have really good regular pizza.  I think the biggest variance is in the speciality slices.  I have three clear favorite local specialty slices:

Jimmy’s Buffalo Chicken

Chefs Broccoli Cheddar

Little Vincent’s Cold Cheese

All are outstanding, but for the Super Bowl, I think Jimmy’s Buffalo Chicken is the clear winner.  You’re combining Buffalo wings and pizza.  And Jimmy’s does it so well.  Buffalo chicken pizza has become ubiquitous in the last decade and a half or so, but so many places don’t do it well.  You need to feel like you’re eating a slice of pizza, not just having dough with a bunch of Buffalo chicken piled on top of it.  I’ve seen it served with a side of blue cheese.  That’s not the way to do it.  The blue cheese has to be part of the pizza and you need to get the ratio of chicken, buffalo sauce, blue cheese, and mozzarella cheese just right.  When Jimmy’s of Greenlawn was sold, I was most disappointed about losing their Buffalo chicken slice, but then I realized that Jimmy’s of Centerport still has the same quality Buffalo chicken pizza.  I have a leftover slice that I’ll be heating up for the game.

As for snacks, I don’t need much.  I was going to go with pretzels and hummus.  Boar’s Head makes an everything bagel hummus, which is fantastic.  But my grocery plans changed today and I ended up getting stuff delivered from 7-Eleven on Doordash.  I didn’t like their pretzel selection so I was looking at other options.  Tortilla chips and salsa are a good option.  Two snacks that I think are overrated are popcorn and regular potato chips.  I ended up getting Cheez-Its and pistachios.  If you want some vegetables, you should reconsider your Super Bowl food decisions.  But if you must, I would want something like baby carrots or celery that you could have with hummus or dip in blue cheese if you’re having Buffalo wings. I should have given more consideration to Totinos Pizza Rolls.

For dessert, I was trying to get some edible cookie dough.  There’s a place in the mall that I’ve gotten it from before, but they didn’t have it this weekend.  So I’ll keep it simple.  I rediscovered the classic ice cream sandwich at the beginning of the pandemic.  It’s really good.  I’m taking it easy on the dessert because I’m sure I’ll have enough food.

So I’m looking forward to some good food and one last football game.  I’ll finish with a scheduling tangent.  We need to make it so that the Super Bowl is Washington’s Birthday Eve (remember Presidents Day is not a thing) so that I don’t have to go to work the next day.  With the extra regular season game, it will be Washington’s Birthday Eve some years, but it’s not this year.  The NFL should take a page from college when it comes to scheduling (a page, not multiple pages, there are plenty of problems when it comes to college football scheduling with the most glaring being that they play the championship game on a Monday night).  The college football regular season goes from Labor Day to Thanksgiving weekend.  Sometimes there’s an extra week in there and so teams just have an extra bye week.  The NFL regular season has 18 weeks now and then you have three weeks of playoffs, a week off, and then the Super Bowl.  They should just make it so that some years have 18 regular season weeks and some years have 19 depending on when Washington’s Birthday is so that the Super Bowl is always the day before Washington’s Birthday.

Anyway, I hope everybody enjoys some delicious food and a Super Bowl without the Patriots, Jim Harbaugh, Pete Carroll, and Tom Brady as much as I’m going to.