If you were to place an order this week at a restaurant that exclusively served viral foods, here’s what you’d be eating: a salad tossed in a special dressing made by Olivia Wilde; an omelet made with only egg yolks; and a Negroni Sbagliato to wash it all down.
Let’s begin with the salad.
If you have finally stopped thinking about Olivia Wilde and the drama surrounding her film “Don’t Worry Darling,” it’s time to reset the days-without-incident clock in your mind. Ms. Wilde was recently the subject of a Daily Mail story about her split from the actor Jason Sudeikis and a rumored on-set affair with Harry Styles, who stars in the film. In the article, a former nanny for the couple’s two children lobbed a series of accusations, including a small detail about a salad dressing.
The nanny claimed Mr. Sudeikis lay down in front of a car to stop Ms. Wilde from leaving to bring Mr. Styles a salad made with Ms. Wilde’s “special dressing.”
Ms. Wilde and Mr. Sudeikis issued a statement that said, in part: “As parents, it is incredibly upsetting to learn that a former nanny of our two young children would choose to make such false and scurrilous accusations about us publicly.”
What is special dressing? We may never know for sure, but on Tuesday evening Ms. Wilde posted a photo of a page of Nora Ephron’s “Heartburn,” the autobiographical novel based on Ms. Ephron’s marriage to Carl Bernstein and their subsequent divorce. On this particular page is a recipe for a vinaigrette consisting of two tablespoons Grey Poupon mustard, two tablespoons of red wine vinegar — specifically “good red wine vinegar” — and six tablespoons of olive oil.
Was this an elaborate troll on the part of Ms. Wilde? The dressing sounds good either way, and you could toss it with the lettuce that outlasted Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain. Before Ms. Truss’s resignation on Thursday, a British tabloid began livestreaming a wilting head of lettuce to see which would last longer — the vegetable or Ms. Truss’s tenure as Prime Minister.
As for the entree, the all-yolk omelet is, apparently, a thing James Corden’s wife, the television producer Julia Carey, once ordered at Balthazar, one of Keith McNally’s restaurants in New York. “James Corden is a hugely gifted comedian, but a tiny cretin of a man. And the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago,” Mr. McNally wrote in an Instagram post earlier this week. He included a grainy photo of Mr. Corden’s head in the post, along with the announcement that Mr. Corden was now banned from Balthazar.
In the caption, Mr. McNally appeared to republish manager’s reports from two separate occasions at the restaurant involving the television host. In one, Mr. Corden allegedly demanded the restaurant serve his table a free round of drinks and comp their drink bill after he reported finding a hair in his meal, which, Mr. McNally noted, Mr. Corden had already finished.
In the second, Mr. Corden allegedly returned a dish to the kitchen claiming there were egg whites in his wife’s egg yolk omelet. “That’s when James Corden began yelling like crazy to the server: ‘You can’t do your job! You can’t do your job! Maybe I should go into the kitchen and cook the omelette myself!’” Mr. McNally wrote.
In a subsequent post, with an even grainier photo of Mr. Corden, Mr. McNally rescinded the ban, writing that Mr. Corden, best known for singing while driving a car, had called to apologize.
The question that remains, however, is what does an egg yolk omelet taste like? “As for taste and texture, it wasn’t bad, but it was … heavy,” Christopher Bonanos wrote in a piece for Vulture, about his attempt to make one at home. “Really intensely eggy.”
Which brings us to the final piece of our order, the drink. A Negroni Sbagliato is a Negroni in which the traditional gin is replaced with sparkling wine. For our order, that wine must be prosecco and you must order the drink by saying the following words, “a Negroni … Sbagliato … with prosecco in it.” Don’t rush over those ellipses and really lean into your most seductive ordering voice. “A Negrooooni … Sbagliaaaato … with prosecco in it.” Bonus point if you do it in a British accent.
That cocktail went viral earlier this month thanks to Emma D’Arcy, who plays Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in HBO’s “House of the Dragon.” (The actor is nonbinary and uses the pronouns they and them.) HBOMax posted a clip of a conversation between them and their co-star Olivia Cooke, who plays Queen Alicent Hightower, on TikTok.
“What’s your drink of choice?,” Ms. Cooke asked her co-star. “A Negroni,” they replied, before adding: “Sbagliato … with prosecco in it.”
“Oooh, stunning,” Ms. Cooke said. There’s just something about the way the two lean in a little closer with each additional word and the delightful way Ms. Cooke says “stunning” that makes you want to watch this video on a loop until all the bad thoughts in your head are a distant memory. To attempt to further describe the charm that oozes off both actors in this clip would be to cheapen it, so I suggest you just take 20 seconds and watch it.
On TikTok, this video has been viewed 11.4 million times and became a popular Twitter meme, particularly among the L.G.B.T.Q. community.
“I keep thinking I should tell my mum that I’ve become a meme in the hope that she’ll be happy for me, but I’d have to explain what a meme is, and I’ve decided it’s too much effort,” Emma D’Arcy said earlier this month, speaking with The Times. “I feel so embarrassed. Because in those interviews, when we’ve been at it for six hours, I’m honestly only trying to make Olivia laugh.”
Will this random assortment be the most delicious or cohesive meal you’ve ever eaten? No, but sate yourself with the knowledge that this weird combination of food and drink means you’ll be very well versed for any conversations over IRL meals about the internet this week.
