caro:

josephweisenthal:

There’s something really irritating about the way Americans act in the presence of Nutella. It’s like, you can be having a totally normal brunch with perfectly respectable people, but then someone brings out the Nutella jar and everyone acts all crazy.

Everyone gets that same giddy smile; that same OMG-this-reminds-me-of-that-time-I-studied-abroad face.

I can’t think of any other food that provokes a similar reaction. Even other sweet foods, so I’m not sure what it’s all about.

It’s peanut butter for White People, tapping into the Europhilia that bubbled to the surface of the we’d-like-to-be-highbrow class during the embarrassing Bush era.  I’m pretty sure that anyone who gets giddy about it now is either looking for an excuse to tell pretentious I-studied-abroad stories or is the kind of person who first heard the word “arugula” on Top Chef.

That said, I think Nutella is very tasty, and this comes from someone who hates peanut butter.  I’m very sorry to hear you’re deathly allergic to it.  When I worked in an ice cream store, we served chocolate hazelnut ice cream and it was sort of our best-kept secret.  My spread of choice, by the way, is pumpkin butter.  I must’ve really weirded out the TSA when I checked a bag full of jars of pumpkin butter on the way back from Vermont that one time.

I might be wrong about this, but a decade ago it may have been tougher to obtain Nutella in parts of the States.  When I was in high school French class and we’d have the occasional croissant power breakfast, I recall that whoever brought the Nutella had to hit up a small specialty grocer (and I went to high school in a college town midway between NYC and Philly, so it’s not like it was total podunk).

Foodies, do weigh in!

Nutella has in one way or another always played some role in my life. Wow, that is quite possible the saddest sentence I’ve ever written. Anyhow…

Nutella was a staple in our house—I remember having it as early as ‘89 when we first immigrated to Canada. Sometimes for lunch, I’d have exactly what you see in the picture above which kinda gave me a lot of trading power when it came to swapping lunch and snacks with the other kids.

Decades ago, the great grandfather of a friend of mine was the guy who imported what came to be Ferrero Nutella from Italy into Canada.

And the first ad agency I interned at had Ferrero as a client, so the kitchen was stocked with Nutella and chocolate all the time.

It’s one of my favourite things—and I plan on having it stocked in my kitchen for the rest of my life. Aaaand, there’s second saddest sentence I’ve ever written.