I Want Sweet Potato Pie to Become the Next Food Craze.

I’ve been accused of burying the lede on many occasions. But today will not be one of those days because I’m here to let the entire world know (at least the part of the world that decides to read this post) that SWEET POTATO PIE IS THE GREATEST PIE OF ALL TIME AND IT’S NOT EVEN CLOSE. And because of this FACT(!) I am openly angling for Sweet Potato Pie to have it’s day in the sun. If Sweet Potato Toast can be “a thing”, than why can’t Sweet Potato Pie go H.A.M.?

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Why all the unsolicited Sweet Potato love? First of all: why TF not? Sweet Potato Pie is objectively delicious. People who don’t think so are obviously filled with hate and need a hug. They also probably kick puppies and old people—that is to say: people who don’t like sweet potato pie should not be trusted.

Secondly, it’s about my ego. When America finally has it’s Sweet Potato Pie awakening, I want it to be said that “KJ KEARNEY OF NORTH CHARLESTON BEEN ON THAT WAVE!”

Because every year there is a food trend that you never saw coming. It sweeps the Nation, causing extreme giddiness or confusion and everyone talks about it for a solid week and a half. Which might not sound like a long time but it might as well be a year by Internet standards.

So if fluffy coffee from Korea can be a thing, don’t tell me that Sweet Potato Pie can’t get some love. In fact, don’t just take my word for it, here’s a list of a few recent food trends from the past five years. Tell me with a straight face you saw any of these items becoming “a thing”:

Oat milk (2019)

Unless you were vegan, vegetarian, or lactose intolerant, I refuse to believe that you saw the rise of oat milk coming for our collective necks. I’m inclined to call you a bold faced liar but seeing as them’s fighting words where I’m from, I won’t. I was drinking almond milk for years as I gave up the cow juice when I ate as a vegan about 5 years ago. Almond, coconut, rice, and cashew were my go-to “alternative milk” beverages of choice. It wasn’t until a routine visit to my favorite coffee shop around 2018 (shout out to Orangespot) where I even learned that milk was being made from oats.

By the following year they couldn’t keep the stuff in stock as EVERYONE decided they wanted their lattes laced with oat milk. Even two years later, the coffee behemoth Starbucks is still having a hard time keeping their collective coffers filled.

Fried Chicken Sandwich (2019)

100 years from now, people will still be referencing the Fried Chicken Sandwich Phenomenon of 2019. In my opinion, this might be the craziest, come-from-nowhere food trend of all-time. Specifically, because people BEEN eating fried chicken sandwiches way before the trend popped in 2019. Arby’s would drop a chicken sandwich from time to time. McDonald’s and Burger King had them as menu staples for decades. For goodness sakes, Chic-Fil-A had been selling nothing but fried chicken sandwiches since the late 1960s.

But when Popeye’s came out with their sandwich, it was like this was the first time the United States had ever heard of such a thing. And the memes…by God the meme’s about the Popeye’s chicken sandwich were so glorious! My favorite, by far, was on where an obviously tired employee was caught sitting on a bench, hunched over, looking for her next breath. The comparison’s of her to Lebron James as he led the Cleveland Cavilers against the Golden State Warriors, down 3 games to 1, were insanely hilarious to me. Everyone didn’t find that particular meme funny which, with proper context, makes absolute sense. But I can’t lie, at the time, I was slayed. And furthermore, I think that two things can be true at the same time: (1) something can be funny when isolated into something as simple as a meme AND (2) not funny when spoken about in the grand scheme of things. But that’s a conversation for another day.

A bright side to all of the attention that Popeye’s brought to the chicken sandwich industry was the outpouring of love for the Black owned businesses who were making great sandwiches before the craze. My friend and DC Based food influencer Anela Malik wrote a great piece outlining where you could find some of the best Fried Chicken Sandos in Chocolate City. Check it out when you get a chance.

Freakshakes (2016)

I don’t know if this item was actually everywhere (like, in a variety of restaurants) OR if these were just everywhere from a “on everyone’s timeline” perspective but damn. Milkshakes are dope but to add a slice of cake AND sprinkles AND fudge AND a brownie sounds like someone took their culinary cues from my 3 year old nephew. While you can still find some spots doing this, like the Black women owned LICK Ice Creamery in Columbia, South Carolina, the Freakshake tidal wave has subsided since its peak in 2016.

Kombucha (2017)

Let me say this: I know for a fact that there were a lot of fans of this naturally carbonated beverage way before it became “a thing” in 2017. In fact, there was a lady, Miss Ann, who lived across the street from my Grandma and swore by the stuff. Miss Ann even made her own and would sell her homemade contraptions to my parents. I think she even tried to get my parents on board with making it themselves. Now while they enjoyed them some “booch”, they didn’t like it enough to try to make it. When they ran out, they would link with with Miss Ann, give her the empty bottles and she’d replace them with more of her signature carbonated bacteria liquid.

But then, seemingly overnight, they didn’t need to wait on Miss Ann anymore because Kombucha started popping up everywhere! I liked it to, don’t get me wrong, but I’d be lying if I told you that I thought it was going to making everyone’s “Popular Food Craze” articles.

The Case for Sweet Potato Pie.

You’ve read about just a few of some of this country’s recent food phenoms and, I’m sure, some of you may be like, “Ok. So 50,430 calorie milkshakes had their time in the sun. So what? Why does sweet potato pie need to be ‘crazed’, KJ?” While my natural inclination is to yell back, “BECAUSE I SAID SO,” I’ve decided to list my reasonings one-by-one.

#1: Pattie Pies Don’t Count.

For the love of God, pleeeeeeease do not turn this heading into a Tweet and have the Patti fans coming after me! I don’t want any smoke with the…Patti Hive(?) or however her extreme fans denote themselves. I am not trying to imply that she, herself, does not “count” or that the pies are nasty because both statements would be false. Patti is a legend who deserves her flowers, not only for being one of the best sangers of all time but also for her ability to pivot into the consumer packaged goods space. And for them to be mass produced, her sweet potato pies are actually pretty good. The filling is dense but not heavy; the outer crust isn’t flakey, per se, but it breaks apart without much effort; the bottom crust is moist but not soaking wet; the color of the pie filling and crust is consistent with what you’re Mama, Grandma, and/or Auntie would make. Perfect scores in terms of what you would be able to find in any Walmart in America.

The reason that I don’t think that Pattie’s Sweet Potato Pie should count towards the “Sweet Potato Pie Craze” (SPPC) is that I don’t want my hypothetical sweet potato frenzy to be linked to Walmart. If you’ve never had a sweet potato pie, this is a great place to start. But no self-respecting food trend, no matter how wild, should be attached to a Big Box Store (which isn’t the whole chicken sandwich thing floored me).

Yes, Pattie’s Pie had their moment in the sun, but it was less about the pies themselves and more about the drama surrounding the pies. It was the situation between Pattie and James Wright Chanel, the guy who posted the first Pattie Pie review that went viral. If you’re not up on game, while EVERYONE IN THE WORLD credited James’ over the top review for enabling Pattie to sell a pie every two seconds(!) during the height of its craze, she was like, “James who? My pies were dope before his lil’ Facebook video” or something like that. It was a whole thing in 2015. Just watch the video if you care to learn of the details of this pie related dust-up.

Anyway, I stand by the assertion that this should not be the only time Sweet Potato Pie should be a part of the American food trend zeitgeist.

#2: A Surge In Popularity Will Help Black Businesses.

SOURCE: Georgia’s Sweet Potato Pie in Louisville, KY.

I have been alive long enough to know that it’s not save to say “NEVER” on the internet. So I won’t say “You’ll never find Sweet Potato Pie on the menu of a White person owned restaurant.”

What I am comfortable saying is that the likelihood of you finding some Sweet Potato Pie on the menu of a Black owned establishment is around 97.2%. So when the Sweet Potato Pie wave washes over the land, and everyone in the nation starts looking for pies to gobble up, they will most likely have to go to a Black owned spot to get their fix. As far as I can tell, very few of these food trends have had a direct, positive effect on Black owned restaurants. A few spots may have been able to cash in but nothing wide spread. This could change of all that. Much like how 2020’s Birria tacos frenzy created a surge of support for Mexican restaurants, food trucks, and chefs, I believe a SPPC could do the same for Black businesses.

#3: Sweet Potato Pie Ice Cream Is From the Gods.

Even if the pie itself doesn’t receive the mania treatment, it’s ice cream equivalent should definitely overtake your timeline for a few weeks! My first time having it was a few years ago at the now defunct, Black owned Park Circle Creamery in North Charleston, South Carolina. When I tell you that this was the best ice cream I had ever scooped into my mouth, I mean that from the bottom of my heart. It was a seasonal offering, only appearing around Thanksgiving time and leaving before the calendar got too close to Christmas. I would inhale these things by the cup, two scoops at a time. Ice cream dotted with pie crust chunks that are then swirled between real Sweet Potato Pie filling taste just as amazing as it sounds. And because all of the pre-packaged Sweet Potato Pie ice cream pints I’ve ever seen have been produced by Black owned companies, this could be another boon for Black businesses like Creamalicious or Richard’s Super Premium Ice Cream based in Chicago. Not to mention Sweet Potato Ice Cream recipes that you can find from Black recipe developers like Butter Be Ready!

#4: The Sweet Potato Is a Super Food (Kinda).

I remember reading this once and, for some reason, it’s one of those random facts that just sticks in my brain. But it wasn’t until I started drafting this post that I also remembered that I didn’t exactly know what a “super food” was anyway. After a light search I found only one thing to be true: there a many different interpretations on what is or is not a super food. To give you an example of what I mean, I looked at super food list from three different publications: MentalFloss (their YouTube channel is a favorite of mine), MedLife (never heard of them), and one from some school that everyone seems to be pretty high on called Harvard. Here are some things I found interesting:

Both MedLife and Harvard consider avocados (yuck!) a super food but MentalFloss’ list did not. I’m inclined to believe MentalFloss because (1) avocado is absolutely disgusting and (2) their YouTube channel is way more lit than the others.

Harvard considers tea a super food but MedLife and MentalFloss did not.

There was only notable food that made an appearance on each list and it was, surprisingly, not salmon! That honor goes to dark chocolate (to be fair, the MedLife list had “Cocoa Nibs” and not specifically “Dark Chocolate” but it’s pretty much the same thing)!

I also learned (from a real school called UC Davis) that there is not scientific definition for the term “super food”. Anyone that has a food item that isn’t processed to death and contains a bunch of healthy nutrients can be marketed as superfood. In fact, the original superfood was the banana and it wasn’t labeled a superfood because of its nutrients. According to UC Davis:

The origin of the term superfood in fact appeared in the early part of the 20th Century as a strategy to market bananas. Developed by The United Fruit Company, the company used the term to promote the practicality of bananas as a daily source of cheap, easily digestible nutrition. In an article published in a 1918 volume of The Scientific Monthly, author Samuel C. Prescott noted “since the edible portion is surrounded by a thick enveloping skin it is effectively protected against the attacks of bacteria, moulds [sic] and other agencies of decomposition.”

So seeing as the whole notion of a super food is kinda fugazi anyway, I can’t see a reason that the Sweet Potato shouldn’t be considered for entry of this completely arbitrary club. Here’s a few cherry-picked reasons why this root should be given card-carrying privileges:

The Sweet Potato has a lower glycemic index than the potato. (mindbodygreen)
It’s rich in an antioxidant called beta-carotene, which is very effective at raising blood levels of vitamin A. (pubmed.gov)
A half cup of mashed sweet potato provides about 2.5 g of fiber. People who consume more fiber are at a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. (US National Library of Medicine)

I found a whole heap of other random health benefits but I figured three was enough. By this point either you’re with me on this Sweet Potato bandwagon or you’re not. And from where I sit, you don’t look like the type of person who kicks puppies or old people so I think it’s safe to assume that you’re down for the cause. My desire to see this through can not be trifled with. My only issue, and to be frank it’s a big issue, is how does one actually make a food “trend” or go viral? I mean, should I start a petition? Should I have pitched this article idea to Bon Appetit Magazine or Gastro Obscura instead of posting it on my own blog? Do I need to beg Oprah to make a video, gorging herself with Sweet Potato Pie? Or maybe we can convince Beyonce to make a sexual reference about Sweet Potato Pin in a new song, sorta like she did with watermelon. Outside of selling my soul to some deity, I’m down to do (almost) whatever it takes to give this my favorite pie an opportunity to shine!

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