It’s been a while since the restaurant industry proper pulled some legitimately insane bullshit. Or maybe I’ve just become desensitized to it all. Even the revelation that GarfieldEats- the Garfield-themed lasagna delivery service whose mere existence gave me the final push to start writing this blog in the first place- had shriveled up and died, and its deranged founder, Nathan Mazri, took the money, ran, and tried to do the whole thing over again, but Scooby Doo themed was so blase I didn’t even consider it noteworthy enough for a write-up-of-the-week.
But now, there’s yet another weirdly-themed ghost kitchen/delivery service hitting the market. That’s right- another one.
(Get it? I said the thing! You read the title, surely you knew it was gonna happen.)
Yup, throwing his hat into the ring alongside talking-cartoon-animal-fanatic Mazri is none other than DJ Khaled, for some reason.
I can’t say I’m particularly familiar with Mr. Khaled’s music. (Luckily for me, he yells his name at the beginning of all the songs he produces.) I’m a little more familiar with his Snapchat videos and semi-memetic catchphrases- including the one that lends itself to the venture’s title- Another Wing.
Another Wing is being boasted as being the most ambitious restaurant launches in history, with 150 ghost kitchens simultaneously opening across the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, and the United Arab Emirates. This massive rollout is being managed by Reef Technologies, who according to every article on Another Wing is a ghost kitchen management group, but according to their website also dabbles in health care and parking lots. Their last food-celebrity collab was with Mr. Beast, a person who I refuse to learn anything about.
Everything about the menu seems to be very much in line with what little I know about DJ Khaled’s personality. The wing sauce flavors they’ve chosen (Buffalo, Nashville Hot, Honey Sriracha, etc) are all crowd-pleasers- bold enough to stand on their own, but nothing too alienating. Oh, and each one has an over-the top, goofy as hell name that one would expect from the guy that yells “LIONS” every time he walks by his weird lion statues (My personal favorite is “They Don’t Want You to Win Truffalo,” because yes, as a known hater of truffle hot sauces, I do not want them to win.). Also, they have waffle fries, which always seems like one of those little touches that adds a level of bougie-ness without pretentiousness that I would expect from the often-plain-T-shirt-clad mogul. Most importantly of all, they are also boasting that seafaring customers in the Miami area will be able to have their orders delivered to their boats via jetski.
But even after all that, there’s one big opportunity that I feel like they’ve missed out on.
There’s no DJ Salad.
Now, again, I understand why that is. DJ Khaled doesn’t look or act like a man that eats much salad. On a menu consisting entirely of fried foods (ok, there are also chocolate chip cookies, those are (probably) not fried), a salad feels like it would go against everything they stand for.
And what would even go in it? Considered googling “does DJ Khaled eat salad” gave few relevant results, we may never know for sure. Kale? A DJ Kale-ed, if you will? I did happen to find a pic of him pouring champagne on fruit salad, perhaps that’s it.
Or, perhaps the answer lies in one of DJ Khaled’s favorite foods: maqluba. While the meat, rice, and vegetable dish has more to do with a paella than a salad, I believe that most of those vegetables and spices could lend themselves to another Levantine dish: tabbouleh. And, perhaps most importantly of all, tabbouleh can be pre-packaged and distributed to their 150 locations much more easily than a leafy-green-based salad. And perhaps that same lack of leafy greens is exactly why a tabbouleh would make the perfect DJ Salad.
Regardless of salad offerings, also suspiciously missing from the menu is one thing that DJ Khaled has notoriously gone on the record as refusing to eat: pussy.
