New Trend Alert: Spaghetti Tacos

Move over PB&J, step aside Mac & Cheese, there's a new kiddie cuisine taking over dinner plates: Spaghetti Tacos! The trend began when a character on the Nickelodean series iCarly served up some sauce-coated strings of spaghetti in a hard taco shell... and now it's made it all the way to the New York Times. Kids who caught the episode have been requesting the dish for months, and moms are giving in nationwide.

Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University, told the paper that “Spaghetti tacos has made it possible to eat spaghetti in your car. It’s a very important technological development. You don’t even need a plate.” (Uh oh, will we be spotting them in the subway soon?) Thompson also likened the pop culture phenomenon to the Festivus episode of Seinfeld.

As for the recipe, some moms are riffing off the original—there's a dessert version, one with guacamole, one with Italian sausage and peppers. But for the purists, here's how it was done on the show; from iCarly's website:

Get taco shells.
Get spaghetti (with meat sauce).
Get a BIG spoon.
Use the BIG spoon to put spaghetti into taco shells.
Eat.

If you make your own version of the spaghetti taco, send us your recipes and photos! It's only a matter of time before this dish is being served up in restaurants around town.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Carlson in Food on October 6, 2010 1:54 PM

Comments [rss]

robingee

"moms are giving in nationwide"

Oh of course they are. There's your problem right there.

rdayk

Big ol' pile of starch stuffed inside more starch in the form of fried corn - this is the American equivalent of the chip-butty. No wonder our kids are fatties.

longacre

People eat pasta with Italian bread all the time. It's no worse than that. Kids are fatter now because they don't exercise, not because of food.

John L

They should see the things I've made with Raemen Noodles.

Rocknrope

As long as they're not eating Taco Bell.

Nyctini11

And we wonder why kids are obese??

longacre

Huh? Spaghetti isn't very fattening unless you eat a pound of it at a time.

Nyctini11

Processed foods galore, i doubt they're throwing in the veggies too, so basically it's a carb laden, unbalanced meal. Exercise?...they won't have the energy to exercise?, they'll be too busy digesting

jrrrrz

white flour, that stuff ain't good.

fuboy

Robert Thompson, shut up because you're an idiot. The printing press, flight, computers - these were very important technological developments. Ranking 'pasta in a hard tortilla shell' as a similar leap forward for humanity discredits your intelligence.

Also, I've never seen such a painful example of "I want what the TV is showing me".

valeriob

::click!::

There... I've turned your sarcasm detector back on.

And "I want what the TV is showing me" is called commercials. (I'm agreeing with you here, it is painful)