Earlier this month, a Redditor that goes by the wonderful name “Brostash” posted the above image from the Dallas pizzeria Cane Rosso to the /r/food subreddit and a lot of people started to freak the hell out over it. How bad did they freak out over it? Well, that was 22 days ago and websites from all over the world are still making a big deal about it, referring to the man behind this image as everything from some sort of insane food supervillain to an international hero to pizza lovers everywhere. Except what most of the people going nuts over this high-priced ranch dressing fiasco don’t realize is that this is old news. At least to the people of Dallas.
Owner Jay Jerrier, whose Neapolitan pizza is so beloved that he has opened three locations, obviously meant the ranch bottle and its absurd price tag to be a joke, but one man’s joke is another man’s OUTRAAAAAAAAGE! At least on the Internet, where people sometimes don’t get jokes. Eater reached out to Jerrier to get to the bottom of this mess and ask the most important question of all: “Why?”
How did the idea to actually put the display on the wall come about?
It was from one of my good friends who works at Pizza Hut in their innovations department. She comes up with some of the crazy things they do — not like the really weird stuff they do overseas, like the mini burgers on the crust — but some of the other stuff. Anyway, on our opening night in 2011, she jokingly gave me this big bottle of Hidden Valley ranch. It just sat in our office for a couple months, but as we were open longer, we kept having people ask, Oh do you have a side of ranch? And I was like, what do you want ranch for? To dip the crust in. Well, we don’t have ranch, but we’ll give you balsamic or Caesar or marinara if you want. It’s weird, it always seems to be young, college-age girls that ask for it.
It just kind of turned into a joke. Okay, if people are going to keep asking for ranch, I thought it’d be funny if I could find one of those “in case of emergency break glass” things. That’s how it started, I went online searching for one that I thought would fit a ranch bottle. I found that little [case] and we put it on the wall. Then I was just joking around with my head of operations, saying we should put some outrageous price on it. We printed out that little sign and put it up there in a frame we had lying around.
Jerrier’s overall response to the 900+ comments on Reddit and the numerous stories being written about this one picture is: “Dude, it’s a joke. Relax.” But people can’t relax when there’s debate to be had, especially in this era of neverending news filler. For example, here’s the news crew at Fox 29 in Philadelphia discussing this hot button issue at the top of the hour.
https://WTXF.images.worldnow.com/interface/js/WNVideo.js?rnd=349715;hostDomain=www.myfoxphilly.com;playerWidth=650;playerHeight=400;isShowIcon=true;clipId=9981430;flvUri=;partnerclipid=;adTag=News;advertisingZone=;enableAds=true;landingPage=;islandingPageoverride=false;playerType=STANDARD_EMBEDDEDscript;controlsType=overlayPhiladelphia News, Weather and Sports from WTXF FOX 29
It’s amazing, the power of Reddit and the Internet in general. Especially when everyone who dips their pizza in ranch is DEAD WRONG. WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU SICK PEOPLE?!?! #TeamBlueCheese #OrBleuCheese #WhicheverYouPrefer #MyHottestTakeOfAllTime