Onda Pasta Bar’s tiramisu drawer is Dr. It looks like something from the adaptation of Myamyazaki in the book Seuss. The calm elegance of satin glove (a cloud of creamy, whipped mascarpone and raw eggs evokes of raw eggs floating above a homemade sponge cake coated with cocoa powder dust) (why is there so much of it?).
The Manchester-based restaurant utilizes long, refrigerated metal drawers that slide to reveal a huge slab of tiramisu that can be scooped into at least 25 individual servings. Restaurant workers weren’t trying to create the oddity of gastronomy when they developed it. They were trying to make the job a little easier. Onda was a pop-up in the food hall at the time, and there was not much room to store ingredients or dishes. They fine-tuned the practice of a typical restaurant using drawers to store chopped vegetables and other ingredients to prepare the tiramisu in advance so that they could be served efficiently all night long. Open, scoop and serve.
A year after the drawers were introduced, co-owner Patrick Brown was watching chef’s scoop tiramisu when he realized the whole process was unusual enough to conspire and entertain people online. In September 2023, he posted a video of the drawer to the restaurant’s Instagram account. At first nothing happened. But the next day, someone commented, “I want one of these to be my bedside drawer,” and the video exploded. By that night, there had been 10 million views across Tiktok and Instagram, and had been shared by celebrities like Florence Pugh.
Since then, drawers have gained cult followings. The initial traffic brought in from the video was enough for Onda to launch a permanent location. I immediately booked for the next 9 months. To this day, some customers have come several times a week to order tiramisu, Brown says. Pop star Sabrina recently made a pilgrimage to Onda with the specific intent to see drawers while in England.
Beyond the horns of the universe, the video’s impact is undoubtedly even greater. last I love content creators in spring and summer Jules Park and Sarah Stanbak Yong I started creating and posting my own tiramisu drawers, built inside the fridge sections that usually house fruit. Then, in the beginning of 2025, things really started escalating. Over the past few months, Italian desserts have soaked through, across almost every public space imaginable. It’s been put in Glass wallet It is worn as a fashion accessory. it has been Eat car console and City Bike BasketAnd that’s true It is built on a tractor bed. The tendency to serve tiramisu in unexpected places is as ubiquitous as doctors have It was measuredalerts people that if they eat raw eggs that have been stored in warm environments for a long time, they are at risk of contracting salmonella and listeria.
The video pushes unlimited desires into the realm of disgust. The running bit in many of the original fridge videos was “This huge portion is the exact amount of tiramisu I want to eat!” But creators now place tiramisu in a clearly uncomfortable context. When looking at desserts built with tractors, or yes, toiletthe food is defined by the container that holds it, or rather opposed.
Between the familiarity and novelty of tiramisu there is a parallel tension that strengthens its current virality. It is a comfortable food for many people, evokes simple luxury and may know how to make it at home. At the same time, people are familiar with it and react viscerally when presented in strange ways. Content creators take advantage of that shock by planning increasingly intense stunts using dessert.
Juliette Moreno is the chef and content creator, as he describes as “cooking without rules.” Three years ago she started a video on how to cook steaks in a toaster. Since then, she has made pancakes on her hair, burgers on iron on her clothes, and ribs with her car engine. She posted numerous videos of herself building and eating tiramisu in a strange environment. Car Console, coolera City Bike Basket.
She doesn’t actually fill these spaces with sticky, unsleek desserts. “Most of the time, there’s a small container in the car’s console, or a bike that actually holds tiramisu,” she says. “I can easily take it out (after recording the video) and have my friends eat it.
However, in her video, it appears that the food is being eaten straight from the container. The video works well, she says, mainly because of the level of digging they evoke, especially when viewers are familiar with the food she is cooking. “When you don’t season the steak or chicken, or snap the pasta in half before it boils, people get mad because they think there’s a certain way to have to cook those foods,” she says. “It’s the same with putting tiramisu in a compartment that isn’t normally the case. These behaviors really trigger people.”
Brown believes Onda’s videos are very popular as the restaurant tapped on its familiarity as well while presenting something unexpected to viewers. Tiramisu started trending in 2023: recipe developers at the time were repeating traditional formats, restaurants Serving started It’s tableside and paint company C2 I’ve made that the name This year’s colour. (Since then it went to a Lindt Truffle Flavorincorporated in a Brownie recipes It went viral in September 2024 and is currently on offer Small helmet At a pop of $12.50 in the New York Yankees game. )
However, the specific presentation of Onda’s video was novel. “It was the right food at the right time,” Brown says. “Tiramisu has been around for a moment, but people have seen something they’ve never seen before in our video. People’s attention spans are short and short online, so they need to show something new to make an impact.
This isn’t the first time that Italian desserts are in the spotlight. The exact origin of tiramisu is contested, but traces it to an Italian restaurant called Le Bechelles of Treviso, developed by Melissa McCart in the early 1970s. I wrote it A 2016 article on the history of desserts. It was popular in the US in the early 1980s because it is included in the menu at Upper East Side Restaurants. Ferridia, and it quickly sparked a frenzy. McCart added that by 1989, New York Times critics had written that many of her friends were raving about the dessert at dinner parties attended in San Francisco. The Americans she knew were excited by the vibrant possibilities of desserts featuring coffee, and they were captivated by the mythology.. Coffee is rumoured to have been served at brothels as it functions as an aphrodisiac, but there is not much actual evidence of this event.
@itsmeju1ietteThis will heal me. ☀☀️😎#treending #viral♬Reggae Island – Julian Angel and Chicou
Almost everyone I’ve spoken about its persistent popularity between Tiramisu recipe developers and Home Cook likewise mentions its riffability. This is a fairly simple formula that anyone can understand and easily customize. Sometimes coffee is exchanged for another liquid, such as limoncello or chai. Also, fruits such as strawberries and mangoes will be added. What gives the recipe a sense of continuousness is the fact that it contains whipped mascarpone and egg-soaked biscuits.
Food writer and recipe developer Mehreen Karim feels that recipes often gain traction when many types of people can see themselves. “Looking at the twists of South and East Asia like Kashmir Chai and matcha, she says. According to Kareem, desserts have access to luxury, which leads to using developers to sell food. “The assumptions being made, and I think it’s very accurate. People are quick to buy it for creamy and impressive desserts.”
She adds that ideally, recipe developers, especially colored recipe developers, do not need to define recipes based on trends that tend to European and white, or familiar foods. “If you lived in a world where everything was based on accuracy and objectivity, you would get fewer dishes called ‘tiramisu’,” she says. “But that’s intriguing people. From a marketing perspective, when everyone posts tiramisu, it would be ridiculous to call it a Kashmir chai layer cake.
Despite its associated decadence, tiramisu is an easy dish to make. In general, Italian restaurant culture is seen as a little more rustic than, say, French patisserie. So it balances it as a luxurious food that is still accessible and familiar, as you eat homemade meals or share them with family-style appetizers. Rachel Carten, a social media consultant and former Bon Apettite social media manager, says she saw desserts pop up at events such as the weddings of Alison Roman and Justin De Iron respectively. She thinks it’s very popular in these settings. Because it’s a bit of a cool girl and has a noisy vibe. “It’s a dessert that doesn’t have to be perfect or too clean, and it’s like the sum of that small portion,” she says. “It really feels like a co-dessert that anyone can dig into. You’re not going to ruin it in the way you ruin the cake by cutting it wrong or anything.”
That sense of familiarity allows recipe details to take the back seat of someone who brings the personality of the content creator online. “I think that sometimes you can improve performance with the reel because I look at simple recipes for entertainment, rather than actually making them on the reel,” says Kalten. “You’ll see comments on food creator posts like “You’re my comfortable creator.” And that’s because it’s just calming to see someone bring together the ingredients and create a recipe.
I hadn’t realized the extent to which the chef would act as my lifestyle role model until I thought up the head of the cabbage bookmark in the fridge. I bought it because I love Instagram videos with Padmarakshmi’s daughter. Their playful relationship, her obvious Indian-American habits, the homeiness of the video, and so on, and I thought I would make the recipe for stewed tamarind and coconut milk cabbage she posted. Since buying cabbage two weeks ago, I have seen 50 more videos of her, but have not tried any recipes once.
When you make and sell food online, sometimes the taste and dining experience comes second to everything else about it. That’s the memory that elicits, the atmosphere of the person making it. Sometimes the changes this approach evokes are subtle. Recipe developers adjust the recipes of their beloved tiramisu to include ingredients from their culture. People who watch the recipe video may never make it, but the food still becomes a small symbol of their hybridized, living experience. Also, content creators like Moreno distort food in intentionally lawless and surreal ways to develop and challenge viewers’ comfort.
It is the tiramisu ability that functions as a tablalasa, making it particularly popular online. It can fit anywhere or in a vessel. It can be used to create homey and pleasant content, or it can be pulled in strange and unexpected directions. And it gives off a sense of simple and low effort, evoking a sense of richness. It’s a food that people know and whether it tastes good or not, it can project equally that they can project their fantasies and humiliation equally I’m soaked Pickled juice.
