Foodcation #12: The Shawn Mendes Culinary Experience
a white boy chipotle order at its prime
I’m truly so indifferent about celebrity-food brand collaborations because they’re such a hit or miss. I can, and I have, shoveled an entire pint of Ben and Jerry’s (and Jimmy Fallon’s) Tonight Dough ice cream in one standing. While I basically get an iced coffee from Dunkin’ every morning, I have yet to try The Charli, the drink order made in collaboration with Tik Tok star Charli D’Amelio that consists of a medium iced coffee with whole milk and three pumps of caramel swirl. One part because I don’t really know who she is and one part because I truly cannot drink whole milk (PLUS: in store and on the app, you CANNOT make any changes to her signature order). So when I heard about Shawn Mendes creating his own bowl via Twitter, I initially didn’t know what to think but I was nevertheless, in wonder.
Chipotle and Shawn Mendes emerged into my life around similar times as a gawky 16 year old in Connecticut but whereas gargantuan Chipotle burritos fueled my rowing workouts and APUSH essay procrastinating, the screechy music of Shawn Mendes was what I chose to skip whenever it came on the radio of my Honda Civic. But over the course of the next 8 years, all that would change thanks to great the E. Coli Outbreak of 2016 and the natural process of a boy and his vocal cords glowing up in puberty and I switched to preferring one over the other. I truly now eat Chipotle as a pure last resort when hunger pangs or groceries run truly low to where I can’t even rummage together a scrappy snack plate. But when the boy wonder who rocked my ears this year with his old bangers like “Lost in Japan” and new album tries his hand at a culinary pursuit for a good cause, I ultimately decided it was worth the go.
On a Thursday afternoon, I ventured out of my apartment with a mission to the Chipotle right around the corner. As I walked in, I tried to scan the menu for any signs of the Shawn Mendes exclusive but found none. I came to discover while waiting in line scrolling through this post on the Chipotle website that you could only order the “true” bowl and make a $1 donation through the app. I’m not enough of a loyal burrito-head to own the app and estimated that I had like 2 minutes before it was my turn to order and that wasn’t enough time to go through the logistics of downloading and ordering through my phone. So I just ordered a custom bowl following baby Shawn’s imagination. (To the young sustainability activists who didn’t get my donation: I’m sorry! If it makes you feel better, I always use a metal drinking straw!) I shimmied down the line to the cashier who told me my order only came to an astonishing $9.74. This was probably because the friendly employee who prepped my order simply stated that I got a “chicken bowl” not “the Shawn Mendes Chicken Bowl with cauliflower rice and guac”. While the guac was not extra, Shawn Mendes and I definitely still are. I left to go back home with the hefty bowl weighing down my arms. This was maybe the one time I felt grateful to live so close to a Chipotle that I can smell the bean fumes from my open window. I got home, washed my hands (of course), and took off the aluminum lid to reveal the finished product.
For how heavy it felt, the contents of the bowl were rather bleak. I start with a carefully crafted spoonful that held equal layers of the cauliflower rice, black beans, chicken, mild corn salsa, guac, and romaine lettuce. I took a bite, carefully dissecting the flavor only to discover...there really wasn’t much flavor. I don’t know what I was expecting considering I ordered the thing taking into account each bland ingredient and forced myself not to add any of the “spicier” salsas that could have added a tad more ~pizzazz~. Even the cauliflower rice which is meant to be cilantro-forward was just salty mush. I kept taking carefully noted bites with the hope that maybe, like my relationship with the discography of Shawn Mendes himself, it would get better with time and repetition. But the more I ate, the more I was overwhelmed with bombs of pure salt, the more uncomfortably full I became.
What’s more is that this came to be the most Suburban White Boy order, Chipotle and beyond, I had ever voluntarily consumed. You know the suburban white boy. The one named Zac, Graham, or Cal. The one who wears Patagonia Snap-T pullovers and a backwards baseball cap. The ones who can’t function without doing their daily pump at LA Fitness. Maybe even the ones who moved to Brooklyn and became the artsy types. Maybe even the singer-songwriter ones from Toronto dating one-Fifth of a Harmony. It’s truly been great to witness and experience the evolution of Shawn Mendes as a teenage heartthrob referring to himself as a puppy on the street to an actualized artist singing about deep self-reflective shit, sometimes with the help of Justin Bieber. This bowl, along with his Netflix documentary, are two pieces of content I consumed that weren’t his music. What I learned from both is that the road to becoming a true artist can’t change the fact that deep down, he will forever be a suburban white boy who believes salt is a seasoning.
