The Newest Food Trend is LOL | Eater

"A Portland restaurant opened in 2022 built around earnest, silly comfort-food riffs: “At the very beginning we knew that we wanted some, pardon the pun, cheesy classics on the menu,” says owner/operator Blake Foster, and the kitchen serves mozzarella-stick “shot glasses” filled with marinara nicknamed “shotzarellas.” According to co-owner Heather Wallberg, the operation “served 29,000 individual cups last year.” Foster also says the concept grew out of lockdown: the idea for the restaurant “first came about during COVID lockdown, when he realized the pod he was in couldn’t stop eating pasta,” and Wallberg adds, “The pandemic has changed. We’ve been able to get out of our homes, but there’s still so much uncertainty and fear and change.”" - Jaya Saxena