Anybody remember when mozzarella sticks became popular? (1 Viewer)

[12thMan]

Just goes to show how quick time goes and how my views of the world and everything in it is first and foremost shaped by personal experience.

What I mean is I've never once considered when mozzarella sticks came around, just they are in one of my earliest memories of restaurants and so therefore I just think of them as existing forever. The newspaper articles talking about "mozzarella being widely available" is another example. Mozzarella not being a standard option at restaurants and a grocery stores up until the 50's? Weird to my brain who has never known any different.

Apples are another example, I remember just a few years ago talking to my grandpa about my new favorite apple variety (cosmic crisp) that they started working on at WSU when I graduated highschool. He told me that when he was growing up apples weren't available all year and there were only a coue of different varieties. I mean, of course, but I had never once thought about how having 10 different apples to choose from at the store year round is not natural.

 

[upNdown]

On purpose?

I’m not usually the kind of guy who misses the joke or worse, takes it personally. This isn’t that. But I’m going to give you a straight answer, because it’s important to me.
I have two kids - one is a college sophomore, so she’s pretty much out the door. The other is a high school junior, so I’ve got less that two years left with her.
The high school junior is the starting libero (important position) on the varsity volleyball team. I’m proud of everything they do, but this one is particularly cool. So yeah, I’ve become a big volleyball fan.
Neither of my daughters have ever had any interest in spectator sports. But all of a sudden, we can watch volleyball together. That kind of quality time together with a 16 year old daughter is rare and priceless. So when the schedule allows, we’ll go to BC together and watch their volleyball games. And when it doesn’t, we’ll watch them together at home.
Also, as it turns out, volleyball is a great spectator sport.

By the way, this was after the BC game this past Sunday. The lady Eagles had just beaten Duke, and 5 minutes later they were signing free posters for the fans (90 percent of the fans there were high school volleyball players.) So this is my daughter and 3 of her teammates just thrilled beyond belief to get some interaction with these “real” volleyball players. I was just lucky to be there.

 

[gopherblue]

I've been chowing down on them since at least the mid to late 1980s, and that was in Iowa, which adopts new trends years after everybody else.

But you guys have taco pizza, so there’s that.

 

[FDLmold]

But you guys have taco pizza, so there’s that.

lol I worked in a pizza place in high school, early 90s, made an absolute crap ton of taco pizzas, even had two customers, every Friday same order without fail - taco pizza - I have personally destroyed many bags of doritos, crunching them up, to put onto taco pizzas

 

[Taghkanic]

Checking newspapers . com, in the seventies all references to "mozzarella stick" are the string cheese, non-fried variety.

In 1982 I see an article talking about the new menu item, mozzarella sticks referring to the fried version.

1985 is when the number of restaurant reviews mentioning them and ads from restaurants featuring them really explode across the country.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/110398571/star-tribune/

Yeah, I was going to say they started cropping up in the mid- or late ’80s, but it took a good 15-20 years before they were freaking everywhere.