Regional food can be all the rage—and sometimes the cause of some rage—online as people debate in favor of their local delicacy. But one alleged regional spin on pizza has people fuming not just for its existence but also because it’s probably not even real.
Last week, Mythic Kitchen’s Josh Scherer posted a 36-second video where he puts together a “Spokane-style pizza,” (in reference to Spokane, Washington), which he refers to as the “most underrated regional pizza.” Scherer speaks quickly as he places pizza dough into a Pyrex container and layers on fry sauce, canned salmon, green bell peppers and onions, mozzarella cheese, and local strawberries on top. He bakes it akin to Detroit-style pizza in terms of its shape and adds more fry sauce to the finished pie before digging in.
“Get that good-quality eastern Washington salmon, get that beautiful creamy fry sauce, and that little hit of sweetness and acid from the strawberry,” he said after taking a bite. “I can see why the entire city of Spokane and the greater Coeur d’Alene region really loves this pizza. This is awesome.”
Scherer’s video immediately drew the ire of the internet, both in the days after it was posted and a week later after the video got picked up again on Twitter. The obvious reason is that for many people, combining something like canned salmon and strawberries on a pizza just sounds disgusting.
But people who either lived in or around Spokane or merely visited it also quickly called Scherer out because Spokane-style pizza, as he produced it on TikTok, simply didn’t exist.
“I honestly can’t tell if this is an actual thing or josh is joking,” TikToker @itsthecr22 wrote.
Local Spokane media is even baffled: Spokane’s KHQ has “never heard of it” while KREM is unfamiliar with Scherer’s depiction of Spokane-style pizza.
As his video made the rounds again, Spokane even started trending as people called Scherer out for the combination as well as trying to pass off the pizza he made as being from Spokane.
There’s a long history of gross food going viral online in part because it’s guaranteed to get a visceral response like this. It doesn’t necessarily matter if the pizza is real, it’s strange and gross enough to get people’s attention and essentially makes it real.
“Your rage retweets only encourage me to do more things like this,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “Don’t you people understand?? I didn’t make this pizza, YOU did!”
