Roland Mesnier, a French native who served as White House pastry chef for 25 years, is perhaps the opposite of someone you’d think would care about Twinkies.
“I do care,” he said. “I care that so many people are losing their jobs. Twinkie is not a bad product. There’s worse products out there. Twinkies are as much an American icon as Ford motor vehicle or other American ingenuity.”
His opinion of the food itself: “The cake is quite nice, but the cream is questionable.” He sent the company ideas to re-energize the Twinkie. “How about having a Twinkie with different citrus cream inside — lime, orange, lemon, with pretty packaging, cheerful and colorful?” he said. “Or what’s wrong with a chocolate Twinkie? Of course, I never heard back.”
Hostess did occasionally sell limited-edition variations on the classic flavor combination, with fillings including chocolate, strawberry and banana cream.
As an adviser to a Chinese company making snack foods, Mesnier was mostly impressed with the consistency of Twinkie quality reproduction. But appreciation of technology can’t override dietary trends of aging, red-meat-shunning baby boomers to whom Twinkies are but a wistful high-fructose memory.
“The people who most mourned the death of the Twinkie are probably those who learned to quit eating them a long time ago,” said Thompson, who is 57 and admits a fondness for Pennsylvania-based rival Tastykake.
Twinkies came back to the brink of food relevance about a decade ago when a transplanted Briton named Christopher Sell opened an eatery in Brooklyn called the Chip Shop.
“We were credited with frying the first Twinkie — that’s my claim to fame,” said Sell, 47. “Maybe it will not be on my tombstone anymore. We did it as a joke just because. ‘Deep-fried Twinkie? Who . . . deep-fries a Twinkie?’ We put things on the menu from time to time just to get a reaction.”
It was a hit, and a food writer covered the excitement for the New York Times. Sell began getting calls from state fair officials all over the country who wanted to learn how best to deep-fry a Twinkie.
Sell considers the Twinkie to be a “clammy cold cake” but asked to describe its appeal deep-fried, he became nostalgic. “When you’re a kid, you remember your mother bringing the cake out of the oven,” he said. “A deep-fried Twinkie brings it back to that level. Freshly baked cake that is fried in slightly salty batter. The salt cuts the sweetness. The Twinkie was destined for the fryer.”
He sells maybe 150 a week at his two Brooklyn shops, for $3.50 each. Friday night, he said, he will defrost three of the Twinkies he keeps in his freezer and serve them to his family. Another Twinkie, he said, he might freeze-dry and frame as “memorabilia” to show his future grandchildren.
“Let’s face it,” he added. “The whole concept of a Hostess-type product is doomed anyway. My kid can’t eat a mouthful of it. We try to give our kids the best we can, and the Twinkie ain’t that.”
But as Thompson said, food is not just about nutrition but also is about biography, childhood history and habits and cellophane-wrapped customs. “Why can’t the apple go out of business and the Twinkie be manufactured?” he asked.
Depending on a willing Hostess buyer, survivors may not include Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, Sno Balls, Donettes and bread lines such as Wonder and Nature’s Pride.
In lieu of flour, doughnations may be made to the organization of your choice. Consider the American Diabetes Association.
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