This Is What DoorDash Expects People To Be Eating On Super Bowl Sunday
While not everybody may be all that excited about the upcoming Super Bowl matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs (again) and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Tom Brady, again and again and again), there's one thing we're all looking forward to on game day, and that's the food! According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Super Bowl is the second-biggest food holiday of the year, lagging behind only Thanksgiving in pounds of food consumed per capita. And just as Thanksgiving has its set of go-to dishes, like turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, the Super Bowl also has its own time-honored eats: wings, pizza, and beer. (And also snack stadiums, but only for those overachievers.)
DoorDash, however, did its own data analysis to predict what we'd be eating on Super Bowl Sunday this year, based on ordering trends from all football Sundays during the 2020-2021 NFL season as well as a survey of 1,000 people. Their findings were ... surprising, to say the least.
What DoorDash says we'll be eating on game day
As DoorDash predicts, the one must-have food at this year's Super Bowl festivities, be they solo celebrations or socially-distanced small get-togethers, will be ... mozzarella sticks. Huh? More of a side dish, we'd have thought. Wings come in second — not real wings, though, but rather the boneless variety. Odd, since restaurant industry data reported by Meat + Poultry shows that the bone-in wing, preferred by 60 percent of restaurant customers, is still king, but it doesn't even crack DoorDash's top 20.
Number three is kind of a head-scratcher. Chips and salsa make for great game day food, true, but are people really ordering out for these? This is the one dish that absolutely anyone aged two and up can make, after all: 1) open bag of chips 2) open jar of salsa (Okay, so kids might need a little help if the lid's on tight). Helmet-shaped serving bowls are strictly optional.
Number four on DoorDash's list is Caesar salad. Ordering Caesar salad to watch a football game? That's surprising. Numbers five through 10, though, are a bit more in line with what you'd expect from a football-watching party: pepperoni pizza, fried pickles, chocolate chip cookies, Philly cheesesteak (had the Eagles not come in dead last in their conference, this sandwich might have earned a higher spot), egg rolls, and curly fries.
Each state has its own game day faves
DoorDash also broke down its most-ordered game day foods by state, and these results not only made for some fun reading but also raised not a few questions. Is it really so cold in Alaska that all those hot fudge sundaes (their top item) don't melt in the delivery vehicles? And are fried avocados really a thing, or is that only in Texas? (They're pretty popular there, topping that state's list.) Also, Washington, what's with all the carb loading? Their top five game day items include: potato chips, curly fries, biscuits and gravy, peach cobbler, and macaroni salad. In Rhode Island, do pickles (their top item) really go with clam chowder and baked scrod?
Some states just surprised us. North Carolina, home of what may be the world's best pulled pork barbecue, opts instead for California rolls, while the state of California unironically has its namesake item coming in at second place behind Margherita pizza. Maryland still loves its state crustacean (though crab dip, not crab cakes, makes the top 10 list), but they're also evidently into Italian food, what with all the baked ziti and cannolis making their list. Perhaps oddest of all, though, was the fact that Utah's top football-watching food was apparently ... scones? Hmm, maybe they're onto something. We're not sure if Super Bowl tea parties will ever really catch on, but the idea's oddly charming.