New Idea
OK Pony and I have the sweetest idea ever.
Picture it. Close your eyes if you have to.
A store. A new kind of store.
It sells flavor.
Like there will be walls and walls of flavor. I imagine little jars or small packets of flavor. There’s the regular nacho cheese, sour cream and onion, parmesan, cool ranch, and flamin’ hot. You know those crackers called “Chicken in a Biscuit”? They’d have that flavor too. There’d also be the sweet ones like cinnamon, maple +brown sugar, watermelon, strawberry-kiwi, etc.
But then you can do like other foods instead of single flavors, like pizza, hamburger, or, like, omelette. I mean people really like omelettes. So why not have stuff taste like omelette? I remember Cheese Nips had taco flavor. That was my favorite. Totally gross, but dude, TACOS except it’s a CHEESE NIP. Pony says that in Japan he had chips that tasted like XTREME corn. And they were corn chips. So they started with corn and then added more corn in post. This is why the Japanese will win. They can just endlessly improve beyond the point of recognition. You eat this Xtreme Corn Chip and you are like, I’m never eating real corn again, it’s just not corn-ful enough.
OK, so then this store would also have blank foods. Unflavored food which sounds funny, but hear me out. It’d be like blank potato chips, blank corn chips, blank nips (w/o the cheese, not as in like Asians ha ha ha I can say nip because I am Asian shut up), blank rice crackers, blank puffs that you find in Cheezy Puffs except without the cheeze. There’d be blank pieces of candy in all of its different forms, like taffy, gum, hard, etc. You can have like blank fruit roll-ups or blank gummies.
THEN OH MY GOD YOU COMBINE THEM.
THEN YOU BECOME A WINNER. A WINNER OF FLAVOR.
Pony and I, if we can get out of our contracts where we are apparently not allowed to work together on anything except for work, will call this flavor store UMAMI. Which is the “sixth” flavor, i.e. the one that is in MSG.
FLAVOR STORE.
It will BLOW PEOPLE’S MINDS. Like a real brick and mortar version of this.
It will be next door to the gym where there is an empty room and a crappy car and everyone gets bats.
This idea is so drenched in win, I am having a hard time containing myself. I have a conference call in a half hour, but you know what I will be thinking about while trying to conceptualize solutions? This idea.
I just realized how you can get a sample of Blank Food. Order some small piece of computer equipment from a large online retailer, like Amazon. They invariably send the little USB thinger in its impenetrable plastic shell inside ANOTHER huge box made of cardboard, ostensibly to protect the pristine surface of the plastic shell. Anyway, between the shell and the cardboard box you will find a sea of potato starch peanuts. They look like styrofoam, but they are not. They are biodegradable. They are also edible (although Mrs. Pony gets disproportionately angry with me when I demonstrate this fact). This is a sample, free with purchase, of BLANK FOOD.
Initially I wasn’t crazy about the name UMAMI, but since I can’t think of another name that isn’t some crap-ass Web 1.1 stinkjob like “U-Flavor-It”, I’m warming.
Also, I can’t believe I fell for that.
That’s a great idea (minus the Bros bit). I totally support it.
But can you say “crackers”?
I just got sneak-attacked by the Bros. Daaaang. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I was just minding my own business and all of a sudden the sweet sound of Bro was intermingling with my She and Him tunes. Yikes.
btw - you’re on a posting rampage. I just spent a half hour catching up!
that’s the second time i’ve heard that bros song mentioned in 18 hours, after forgetting it existed for about 18 years. does this mean something? spooky.
oh my god, I am having a blog overdose. So much good stuff I am having a hard time assimilating it all. I’m OB’ing at this moment. I may need methadone to ween off of this good stuff! So many posts, so fast Annie, I am a happy blog reader!
how would you pronounce the name:
oo-ma-mai
oo-ma-mee
you-ma-mai
you-ma-mee
?
Interesting idea. If you mixed flavors with vitamins and put them in tablet form, then they could be marketed to astronauts and dieters under a different label. Astronauts and dieters will buy anything.
Also, I have often heard people exclaim “God, this tastes like crap” when they eat their food. Is this the lost “fifth” flavor? Will you have it in your store? Could ordinary people like me afford it?
i think english pronuntiation would be
OO-MA-ME I got a London born friend to advise me on that.
Dude, you are having so many ideas for new places, gym, crumbs installation, homie world, UMAMI store, loving it. You can match it with my research about the cities of the future.
When I really love the taste of something, getting full is just annoying because it prevents me from enjoying more deliciousness. This will magically solve that problem! Man, I could really go for about a case of bacon dust right now…
Pony: Mrs. Pony is right. Those blank packing peanuts aren’t really meant to be eaten. They were probably strewn all over the floor of a warehouse and people just pick em up and dump em in boxes. I bet people roll around naked in it too. You have been eating blank peanuts that were near/in/up certainly places we need not mention but you know where they are.
Renato: Crackers, yes. Blank ones. I would flavor them with cracker flavor which tastes blank. Very clever.
Fly: Pedro is right, ooo-MAH-me.I think for FLY I will just take a bunch of photos from different series to make a super FLY post.
Dr. JimBob: Haha umami is the fifth flavor in Japanese. It’s what’s used to describe MSG kind of. That it ‘enhances’ the umami flavor/sense. But of course we’d have crap flavor. Of course! I mean if it’s a flavor it will be in the store.
Pedro: Dude I”m so busy with all these ideas I don’t understand why I”m poor. I mean these ideas are MONEY.
Steve: There’d be at least a dozen flavors of bacon (aged, Canadian, smoked, etc.) It’d probably sell the fastest.
talking about astronaut food, i just had the peanut space food stick and space ice cream i bought from that aircraft museum place in washington and they SUCK big time!
Hell yes! Finally…a good idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s like vitamin water…only better! I like the idea of blank potato chips by the way. You should have DIY bags of flavor too.
Wait, nip = asian? I’m asian, did I miss the memo?
Fly: I hate astronaut food, it’s gross. There’s a Korean astronaut and they have astro-kim chee which I am so not even going to try.
Maddie: Dude Vitamin Water has NO fruit juice in it. I’ts so confusing.
FlatGreg: Nip is like a Japanese person. Nippon. Where have you been?
Maybe you have a different breed of architect in NYC than we have in Atlanta. By chance, I have consulted with a few architecture students about their work recently, and near the end of these meetings, I have asked them “Hey, by the way, have you ever heard of ‘Peacha Kucha’?”, or “Have you ever been to an architect ball?”, or “Do you have balls?”, and they just look at me like I am from Uranus. Are these discriminating features of students versus seasoned practitioners? Perhaps their balls simply haven’t had a chance to fall off yet due to their professional immaturity. Please advise.
This made me glum all morning. We must hurry. Superchef David Burke is nipping at our heels.