I’m just gonna go ahead and warn you that this is about to get so, so gross.
Like, if you’re squeamish, maybe have a barf bucket handy? That’s really all I can do to prepare you for what you’re about to experience.
Adrienne Bailon, singer and talk show host, has some interesting food combinations in store for us that you aren’t ready for. So let’s all hold hands and swear to never eat any of this, okay? Okay. Let’s go.
Meet Adrienne.
In case you’ve been living under a millennial rock, Adrienne is one of the founding members of The Cheetah Girls.
You remember them from your entire childhood, right? Adrienne, Kiely Williams, Sabrina Bryan, and Raven-Symoné ruled the Disney channel with their albums and three The Cheetah Girls movies. It was…cheetahlicious.
She’s a talk show host.
After the cheetah craze ended, Adrienne moved onto some Disney channel shows (like The Suite Life of Zach and Cody ), and then to reality TV, where she’s been ruling the roost (pride? Do cheetahs have prides? I’ll get back to you.) since 2013.
Currently, she can be found on The Real, chatting with Tamera Mowry, Jeannie Mai, and Loni Love.
And she has WEIRD TASTE IN FOOD.
It may sound like I’m shouting, but that’s because I fully am! Okay!
Some of the choices she makes on her YouTube channel kinda made my stomach turn.
And then…weirdly…grumble. Because maybe she’s onto something for a hot minute with some of these, okay?
Dish 1: Quesadillas.
Easy, right? A delicious, gooey, crispy cheese quesadilla. There is nothing weird that you can do to one of those bad boys.
They’re good af, simple to make, and impossible to mess up. Right?
…Well, quesadillas with a twist.
Wrong. See, Adrienne prepares her tortilla, gets her cheese all together, then slices up a banana — oh yeah, by the way, there’s a banana involved here — and melts it all together.
You know what I’m the most mad at? I would try this. Just once.
Her crew actually didn’t hate it.
Adrienne has her assistant camera operator come onscreen to try it. “You have to have an open mind for this one,” she says, before giving him a bite.
He likes it. Seriously. “I’m not lying, that’s actually pretty good.”
See, now I want to try it! Like, a lot! Guys, dinner at my place? I’ll bring the cheese, you bring the bananas?
Dish 2: Fries
Honestly, this one is pretty tame. Adrienne hits up McDonald’s for some fries and a McFlurry, then dips the fries into the ice cream and eats it up.
This is definitely something we’ve all done before, so it’s no biggie. And it definitely can’t be escalated.
Dish 2 With A Twist: Frickles
But wait, it actually can be escalated. First, Adrienne swaps fries for fried pickles, or “frickles,” which I had never heard them called before today.
So, okay. Still on the sweet and salty theme. That’s fine. Fried pickles and ice cream! I’m down.
Ice cream, but make it savory.
Oh just kidding, because she swaps out the goodness of a McFlurry and replaces it with the utter horror of black olive brittle and goat cheese ice cream.
Sorry, one more time: Black olive brittle and goat cheese ice cream.
That is a thing that exists on this Earth, and Adrienne dips fried pickles into it.
Choices.
The crew are not as jazzed about this one.
She pulls her Associate Creative Director over, who actually has an open mind to this. She says she enjoys garlic ice cream (wow), so this should be interesting. Right?
“The goat cheese is a little hard to get past,” she says, raising her hand to her mouth. “Yeah…it’s not good.”
I am shocked.
Dish 3: Rice.
Rice and beans. A classic dish. A good dish!
One that is the staple for many different other dishes. A building block to a beautiful thing, if you will.
So, like, what if you made it…sweet?
Just add a little sweetness.
Adrienne pulls out a thing of peanut butter and just plops it in with a cup of steamed white rice. And that’s…it.
She says her dad made this for her as a kid. “I think that’s where I inherited my strange tastebuds from. I swear my dad will eat anything and try anything. And he also likes crazy combos, and so does my sister.”
Time to test it on the crew again
Adrienne hauls Ray (the show’s hairstylist) and Grace (the show’s makeup artist) to try her concoction.
Grace is Ecuadorian, and has actually heard of this. “So, we eat tripe with peanut butter,” she says, which delights Adrienne, who is also Ecuadorian.
That’s fish, though…not just plain white rice.
This is not Thai food
Surprisingly, Ray and Grace are not the biggest fans of this…dish. Can it even be called a dish? Adrienne insists it’s like Thai food, which it is so not.
Anyway.
Grace goes first. “That’s a lot of Skippy on it, though.” But she says it’s not bad.
Ray goes second. He eats. He pauses. He contemplates his existence. “It’s terrible.”
“I’m Anthony Bourdain right here, just trying all kinds of new things.”
While Ray repeats “That’s terrible,” Adrienne declares that she is like the late Anthony Bourdain. “Just traveling the world, eatin’ new things.”
I love this confidence. I love this weirdness. I…love her.
By the way, she eats really weirdly, too
Adrienne says that her husband fell in love with her because of the weird way she eats. And by weird, she means weird. Why?
Because she eats a Kit-Kat like it’s a corn on the cob. Literally. She nibbles off the edges, then separates the wafer innards and sucks them clean of chocolate. Then she eats the wafer.
So anyway.
Dish 3: Tuna Salad
Ah, tuna salad. A dish found at many a buffet, BBQ, or picnic. A simple dish.
“My tuna fish does not take fishy, number one. And number two, it’s got mad flavor.”
Oh boy. Here we go.
First up is the hotly debated mixative.
“The key to some bomb tuna fish is what? Mayonnaise.” She says it can’t be miracle whip—it has to be straight-up mayo.
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She adds it to the tuna and begins to mix it. The combination of fish and mayo starts to squish. “You hear that? That’s the sound of some bomb tuna fish.”
Now for a little seasoning.
Next up is the relatively harmless addition of salt and pepper. She says it helps cut down the fishy taste, which like…sure! It probably does!
So we’re done, right? Salt and pepper is the weirdest thing to go in the dish? We good here?
We’re not good here.
The last ingredient is upon us. Adrienne reaches off camera. She pulls a glass into view. “And just when you thought I was done…some fruit punch.”
I’m not okay.
She came up with this “recipe” as a teenager when her tuna fish salad was just not doing it for her. “I just had high-end taste buds with a low-class budget.”
But wait! It gets worse!
Adrienne eats her fruit punch tuna salad in its pure salad form, but also in a fun sandwich form.
And you can’t just have it plain — you have to dip the whole sandwich in the fruit punch glass and soak the bread in it.
The most upsetting part is that her producer actually likes it. Idk what to do with any of this.
Dish 5: Cheerios.
Okay, I can get behind this. It’s pretty simple: when Adrienne was a kid, she wanted her favorite snack, Cheerios, to have a little something extra to them.
So she hit up the fridge and pulled out a stick of butter. No, stay with me, because this makes sense.
Fried. Cheerios.
Fried! Cheerios! I love this concept! “Although Cheerios are with the heart association, the butter is not.” Damn.
Anyway, this is Adrienne’s go-to snack for watching TV. She dumps the fried cheerios in a bowl and just snacks away.
I want to try this. She might be a genius.
There’s so much more to see.
If you want to see Adrienne make all of these dishes and then shock her crew with her flavors, hit up the video and join me in wondering if bananas in a quesadilla is a concept we can get behind.