It was the electric-blue Jalen Brunson rigatoni that got me.
Nestled in a glowing ooze of orange vodka sauce and white heaps of burrata, the New York Knicks-themed pasta dish from Patrizia’s, a tri-state Italian chainlet, had been caroming around social media like a loose ball. It broke my dam of will against novelty foods.
I was all in now.
Less than a mile from Madison Square Garden, I housed the noodles an hour before Game 3 of the Finals. For dessert (and journalism), I chased my dinner with a Knicks-colored donut from the Dunkin’ next door.
Knicks Fever has upended the city’s food scene, causing a run on blue-and-orange dyes, sprinkles and other decorative instruments of culinary science.
“If you try and get the food dye, the food coloring right now, it’s very hard to achieve,” said Jesse Spellman, the co-owner of Utopia Bagels. “Everybody’s trying to get it. It’s kind of like when it was Covid and you couldn’t get toilet paper. It’s similar.”
Across the five boroughs, basketball fans hopped up on the adrenaline of winning are uninhibitedly devouring Bronx cannolis with colored filling, Staten Island hot dogs with blue and orange kraut and blue microfoamed drinks made with ceremonial-grade matcha (available in Brooklyn, naturally).
Eli Sussman, a chef and food influencer, called Knicks fever “a singular opportunity that may not come back up again.”
“A famous actor and Russ & Daughters regular–not naming names–ordered 132 of them to give out to each member of the cast and crew of a show she’s shooting,” Russ & Daughter’s fourth-generation co-owner Niki Russ Federman said in an email. (Later that day, actor Busy Philipps posted an Instagram story featuring the cookies from the set of “Cupertino,” her new legal drama.)
Of course, blue dye has its detractors—and not just the ones seeking to rid the food system of additives.
Mike Mitchell, an avowed Celtics fan and the co-host of the food podcast “The Doughboys,” was less than pleased to encounter blue-and-orange riffs on the black and white cookies at Russ & Daughters. He tried one anyway.
“I got a regular black and white cookie there too,” Mitchell added. “I gotta say it was much better and kind of close to the Spurs’ colors.”
Write to Adam Chandler at [email protected]
