Motherboard

One of the most goofball tropes of the web age is people’s constant use of food-related adjectives to describe their content. Headlines shout about the most scrumptious celebs, the spiciest gossip, the sweetest cats, the crunchiest buzz bands, the tastiest nuggets of trivia… It’s all a load of stale hogwash. It makes no sense. It also makes me hungry, which then makes me grumpy, so with that in mind I decided to find the tastiest fucking thing on the Internet.

My methodology was simple: I searched for “tastiest thing” (in quotes) with six different search engines — Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Dogpile, Ask Jeeves, and Lycos — and ranked the top ten page results with a points system — the first hit got 10 points, the tenth got one, and so on. I compiled all those tasty web bites into a spreadsheet and tabulated which topics the Internet considers the most scrumptious.

10. The Bagels at Einstein Bros. Bagels

Total Points: 10 (all from Ask Jeeves)

I don’t have a clue as to why this Yahoo Answers question is the top hit on Ask Jeeves. The page didn’t even make the top ten on any of the other sites. Ask Jeeves is a foul-tasting piece of shit.

9. Home-Delivery gourmet food in France

Total Points: 15 (6 from Yahoo, 5 from Dogpile, 4 from Lycos)

Dining Direct is some gourmet private catering service run by a chef from New Zealand that may be in Morzine, France. The website, which may or may not use Comic Sans, doesn’t say where this food can actually be delivered to, or even where it’s from. It has ‘Feed Me,’ ‘Treat Me,’ and ‘Indulge Me’ menus to choose from, which I think just means that they get progressively more expensive, in case you want to guarantee you’re blowing the maximum amount of money on premade food for your servants to microwave.

6. (Tie) McDonald’s Parfait

Total Points: 16 (8 Yahoo, 6 Lycos, 2 Dogpile)

Here’s another question result, this time from ChaCha: “What’s the tastiest thing at McDonald’s?” Now, McDonald’s is evil and wrecks the rainforest and the food never rots and all that stuff, but there are still from tasty items on that menu. The tastiest of those is not a fucking parfait. This response is the pussiest thing I’ve ever read online: “Some seem to think the McDonald’s Parfait is the tastiest thing they have. Give it a try. Hope you enjoy.” Go back to reading your New Yorker, you noncommittal jackass.

6. (Tie) Some Mom’s Cherries and Champagne

Total Points: 16 (6 Ask Jeeves, 6 Lycos, 4 Google)

People are getting crazy on the Australian KidSpot forums. Some mom posted the question “What’s the tastiest thing in your fridge right now?” and said that, while her boys would probably say the cherries, she prefers the bubbly. This is the Internet, people. This is what this wonderful invention has reduced us to, staring slackjawed at the contents of our goddamn refrigerators so that we share that incredible information with random other lifeless zombies on kid forums.

6. (Tie) Scarlett Johansson

Total Points: 16 (10 Google, 4 Yahoo, 2 Lycos)

Yet another question thread shows up, this time asking what the tastiest thing in the world is. Really clever reply from that guy, he really resolved that question. Because this thread is stupid, let’s talk about my favorite question thread, which didn’t make the cut but got a whopping nine points from Bing, which is apparently the party search engine. “What is the tastiest thing to chase bacardi 151 with Besides coke?” This person is now dead.

5. Chocolate Nesquik / Spiders

Total Points: 17 (9 Ask Jeeves, 8 Bing)

Yahoo Answers user “Dr. House f@rted” wants to know what the best topping for vanilla ice cream is. Again, here’s an Australian asking inane questions on the Internet. Who in their right mind thinks that they need to crowdsource their ice cream eating habits? The damn dessert will melt before they get a response anyway. Does no one have any creativity any more? This is depressing me.

4. Chocolates, with wine

Total Points: 20 (10 Bing, 7 Lycos, 3 Dogpile)

This is the top result on Bing. Someone asked for the tastiest thing to pair with wine. Just generic wine, mind you. Since this is on the UK Yahoo Answers, that wine probably came out of a can. The response is chocolates, which isn’t actually such a bad answer considering that there’s no more info on the wine other than the fact that there’s a 50:50 shot that said wine is actually a three liter bottle of cheap cider.

3. Steak, ‘stewed’ in creamy pepper sauce, with leek dumplings and a spring onion mash

Total Points: 21 (10 Dogpile, 10 Lycos, 1 Yahoo)

You know, the meal mentioned in this thread actually sounds intriguing, but I’m not convinced that the person who claims its her “speciality” has enough brain function to even get all the ingredients into the same room. The grammar in this post is astounding. A macho British rugby guy once lectured me in Costa Rica about how the Brits invented the English language. That doesn’t give you all the right to butcher the fuck out of it, thanks.

2. Pickle-Flavored popsicles

Total Points: 26 (9 Yahoo, 9 Ask Jeeves, 8 Lycos)

The first line of Bob’s Pickle Pops’ website states “It’s hard to imagine someone thought of the idea to create frozen treats made from pickle juice.” That’s true, Bob. It is hard to believe, largely because every other person who’s ever come up with that horrific idea has been immediately struck down by a meteor or lightning bolt sent from the somewhere in the universe to protect us all from disgusting “treats.”

1. The moose bouche at the Christon Cafe

Total Points: 27 (10 Yahoo, 9 Lycos, 8 Ask Jeeves)

This grainy Flickr photo, which surprisingly only has 143 views, is officially the tastiest thing on the Internet. Apparently the Christon Cafe is located in Tokyo and is “a typical Japanese themed restaurant, the theme here being a sort of Christiany gothicy mix.” The photo actually comes with a nice little review and generally is well-packaged. The Christon Cafe also sounds like a cool restaurant, although apparently it sucks now. All I can say is that I’m relieved that the tastiest thing online is actually cool. Good on you, Internet.