The Dish
Valentine doughnuts?
Still upset about the lack of Necco Sweethearts candies this Valentine’s Day? Necco’s sale to another candy company last year left the iconic conversation-heart candies in the lurch this February. Leave it to Krispy Kreme to save our love lives.
The doughnut makers have introduced a line of heart-shaped conversation doughnuts with pastel frosting and adorably current sayings, like “BFF,” “SO EXTRA” and “DM ME.” They come in four flavors — cake batter, chocolate kreme, raspberry filled, and strawberry and kreme — and none taste like chalk. “Finding the right word can be like, I don’t know ... hard,” said Dave Skena, chief marketing officer for Krispy Kreme. “But eating a doughnut is easy. So, we printed the right words on the doughnuts for you so you can’t mess this up.”
Preach it, Dave.
The doughnuts are available through Valentine’s Day at Krispy Kremes across the Bay Area.
Zoo ale
Move aside Budweiser Clydesdales. There’s a new, ferocious animal beer mascot in town. Oakland’s Ale Industries has just released a new beer — Bay Cat California Ale — to benefit Oakland Zoo and its mountain lion conservation efforts.
The ale is made with locally sourced sage, chamomile, coriander and orange peel.
And the label is an eye-catcher, with silhouettes of the city skyline, rolling hills and a mountain lion caught between the two. For each case of Bay Cat purchased, $6 will be donated to the mountain lion preservation fund.
As for the name, it’s a nod to BACAT, the Bay Area Cougar Action Team, which the zoo co-founded in 2013 with the Bay Area Puma Project and the Mountain Lion Foundation.
Fyre Pyzza
Pizza chain Villa Italian Kitchen, with locations in San Jose, Livermore and Milpitas, has launched the Festival Pyzza ($25per slice), a hilariously sad, tomato-sauced pizza topped with two slices of processed cheese product, inspired by the epic-fail 2017Fyre Festival in the Bahamas. Billed as “a new luxury pizza experience for only the wealthiest consumers and industry influencers to enjoy,” it’s a jab at the flash and subsequent crash of what was supposed to be an exclusive, over-the-top luxury music festival filled with celebrities and supermodels.
If you’ve seen Netflix’s “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” and Hulu’s “Fyre Fraud” documentaries, you know that instead of the lavish meals and private villas organizers promised, ticket-holders were greeted with rain-soaked tents and sad plates of food very similar to the one Villa Italian Kitchen is promoting now as — wink — “the greatest pizza that never happened.” — Jessica Yadegaran and Joan Morris, Staff