We live in turbulent times. This was made perfectly clear by the harrowing events of last weekend.
I spent Friday in my cubicle, blissfully unaware of the growing brouhaha outside. While I was returning e-mails, finalizing ad campaigns, and putting the finishing touches on a hard week's work, war was breaking out in our fragile community.
Only after I left the safety of the office did I discover life would never be the same. Great events in history come and go, but we shall always remember where we were and what we were doing when the Great Pickle Wrap War of 2021 broke out.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you (a) live under a rock, and (b) that rock is definitely NOT in the Quad Cities. But I'll recap one last time in case you were, I dunno, camping or something.
Late last week, a certain Bettendorf restaurant posted their daily special on Facebook: thick-cut dill pickle deliciousness surrounded by cream cheese and a dainty slice of deli meat. You know, those tasty concoctions that always make the menu at family reunions? You never know who made them. You never know where they came from. They just appear on the potluck table thanks to magical pickle pixies, or at least thanks to that one weird cousin whose name you can never remember.
Well, this outraged the owner of another local deli. You see, she's been serving pickle wraps as a side dish for years, and she was a little irked to find another business copying her gimmick. But rather than take it on the chin and perhaps grumble about it to friends, she opted to air her grievance in a public post on Facebook while insinuating some kind of dibsies on the general concept of pickle wraps.
The post took approximately 32.6 seconds to go viral. By the time I got off work, EVERYONE was talking about pickle wraps. Memes were flying around social media, Lopiez was selling pickle-wrap pizza, bars were offering pickle shots, tattoo shops were etching pickle wraps onto ankles, and even the Moline Police Department tweeted out their diplomatic support of pickles in general. It was a viral celebration of dill, vinegar, and vitriol. Within two hours, a friend of mine from California was texting me asking why "Quad City pickle wraps" was trending across the country.
Over the past week, I've now been stopped on the street by FIVE complete strangers, each saying they're looking forward to my take on the pickle wrap controversy. While I appreciate the support and love the assumption I'd be our paper's go-to authority on the much-coveted pickle beat, I may be about to disappoint you.
I have no horse in this race. I don't even really like pickle wraps. I won't NOT eat them should they be in front of me, but I've never sought them out. Call me steampunk if you must, but when it comes to vegetables floating in brine, I'm what you might call a pickle purist. I'd honestly much rather just chomp on pickles right out of the jar. They're perfect as is. I'm in full support of augmenting my ham with pickles, but I've never encountered a pickle that needed to be augmented by ham.
I have no hot-take on pickle wraps. Besides, I'm far too busy planning my lawsuit.
You see, the most outrageous thing happened to me. I went to a fast food restaurant for lunch the other day, and you'll never believe what happened. I ordered a cola, and this restaurant had the unmitigated audacity to serve my cola with little cubes of FROZEN WATER floating in it.
But here's the thing. I've been putting frozen water cubes in my drinks at home for YEARS. "I was taught to make them as a kid and have made them ever since. Being a person that operates with integrity and 100% originality [except when I'm copying other people's angry Facebook posts verbatim,] I have zero respect for people who snatch ideas."
Clearly, it seems a bit of a stretch to claim ownership of the "idea" of a single item on a restaurant menu, especially one that's been around since those weird 1950's cookbooks that mostly featured umpteen intriguing ways to suspend things in Jell-O. If you think you're the owner of the "idea" of pickle wraps, I know a few dozen Mee-Maws and a limitless number of church basements that might beg to differ.
If a restaurant could claim ownership to a food item, McDonalds could sue Burger King. Burger King could sue Wendy's. Chick-Fil-A could sue pretty much everyone. You'd have to drive to a mining town in central Mexico just to get a taco. You'd have to go to Frankfurt to get a hot dog or Hamburg for a Quarter Pounder, and God forbid you want to sauce it up without a voyage to Dijon or Worchestershire or wherever those Thousand Islands are. About the only thing we could eat with legal impunity in this neck of the woods would be Quad City style pizza -- and as much as I love it, an exclusive diet of fennel sausage probably isn't wise.
The only way to claim "100% originality" in the restaurant game would be to sell something so weird and disgusting you can ensure it's never been invented before. If you opened a food truck that only sold pickle milkshakes with cream of opossum soup, you might not ever have a single customer, but you could at least wear the mantle of "100% originality" with pride.
Honestly, though, I truly couldn't care less. I like BOTH these restaurants and hope they both thrive. My only wish is that maybe this whole episode will translate into a Quad City pickle renaissance. I'm all in favor of increasing my overall pickle consumption. Maybe we should apply the best of our local 100% originality and create Quad City style pickle wraps. Take a pickle, cover it in a malted crust, top it with fennel sausage and Jim's rib sauce, and serve with a side of Boetje's.
Hmm. That actually sounds pretty good. Anyone have a food truck I could borrow?
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