Cacio e Pepe Goes Beyond Pasta to Become the New Pumpkin Spice

In 2019, Esquire published an impassioned feature on the ubiquity of burrata. The headline of the story, by noted food writer Jeff Gordinier, used a colorful four-letter word that Bloomberg won’t repeat. He lamented the oversaturated market for the cream-filled cow’s milk cheese: What had once been a luxurious surprise had become a symbol of chefs phoning it in. The truth was undeniable: Restaurants killed burrata.

Now it’s time to call out another overexposed food: We have reached peak cacio e pepe. Once a reliably delicious pasta, flavored simply with pecorino and crushed black peppercorns—a titan of Italy’s cucina povera, or kitchen of the poor—the dish has become a beaten-down flavor profile that shows up in places it doesn’t belong. Cacio e pepe has become so ubiquitous that it’s now a doughnut flavor.