If you’ve spent any time in a corporate setting during December, you know them by the trail of their buckets. The popcorn people, we mean, who stuff buckets the size of cannons with enough caramel corn, cheese popcorn and wan yellow popcorn to satiate a hungry walrus. These Buckets of Infinite Popcorn are super-popular as gifts given to work associates, among others, particularly around Christmastime.
Sometimes you find yourself visiting a friend at another cubicle in one of these workplaces, and though ostensibly you came to discuss the impending merger blah blah blah, it’s that bucket of popcorn that inexorably draws your paw. Plunging deep into its tin recesses, your hand comes up with a handful (or a cupful, if hygiene’s your thing) of the stuff. Is it sweet? Is it salty? Does it really matter, you wonder, as you randomly shove carbs into your maw?
That was the world of corporate popcorn giftage a few years back. But now, oh now, my friends, the popcorn mavens are capable of drizzling a variety of molten chocolates, caramels, nuts and other candy-esque toppings to form large nuggets of chocolaty power that make Crunch ‘n Munch taste like so much sugary yuck, and Cracker Jack slink back into its sad, little, crappy-prize-inside-every-box.
Harry and David’s Moose Munch may pace the industry, but there are more chocolaty and otherwise bewitching popcorns still. Popcorns that, despite their evident position on the toteboard of sins, are extraordinarily difficult to stop eating.
If a seeker of the holy oil wishes to know more, explained Ada Shaw, this pilgrim might journey to “Popcorn School.” Shaw, a maker of fudge (so to speak) at Edwardsville’s Chef’s Shoppe, recently attended a spate of learning sessions at Popcorn Papa, a family of gourmet popcorn shops in the Dallas area. Chef’s Shoppe owners Nancy and Scott Schneider made the pilgrimage as well, and they’ve returned to the Metro East to fill buckets of all sizes with popcorn in 60 different varieties.
The Schneiders plan to open the new popcorn annex next door to the current Chef’s Shoppe by May 1. They plan to offer, said Shaw, a bedazzling selection of flavors and toppings, included but not limited to jalapeno cheese; ranch; cheddar; double cheddar; “Chicago” (a mix of cheddar and caramel); “Puppy Chow”; Cookies & Cream; Heath Bar, caramel with or without walnuts, pecans, and peanuts; cherry; blueberry; blackberry; peach; and chocolate in milk, dark, and white.
You can order various recommended flavor combinations (dark and white chocolate caramel corn with peanuts and pecans, say), or go completely to mad-scientist territory with your own custom experiments (white chocolate/blueberry/pecan, mebbe?).
The Shoppe will vend this crunchy feed in “very small mini bags that hold two to three cups all the way up to large tins,” said Shaw.
You could buy just enough for a Sunday stroll from the Shoppe to Edwardsville’s refurbished Wildey Theatre for a movie, or fill bucket after bucket to mail to your corporate co-conspirators, in holiday-season gratitude.
The Shoppe, which sells kitchen tools and gourmet fare, is hoping that its new popcorn operation will grow to match its considerable fudge output (so to speak).
The heyday of the gourmet-popcorn and/or fudge shop at every shopping mall (and, indeed, the shopping mall itself) may be behind us, but plenty of St. Louis chefs have had fun with the ingredient in recent years.
Bridge Tap House & Wine Bar’s featured flavors of bar-snack popcorn include honey, beet powder, and mustard; smoked Spanish paprika and sea salt; Chai spice; Wasabi ginger; and Mocha. Sushi food truck Chop Shop STL offers a wasabi-buttered popcorn that stops ‘em in the streets.
Even industry titan the Popcorn Factory now offers Buffalo/ranch, cracked pepper, and ginger-teriyaki flavors. (And look to Chicago’s Garrett Popcorn for a flavor with macadamia nuts and melted caramel.) Locally based POPtions, doing very well in Frontenac, thankyouverymuch, offers popcorn in gooey butter cake -- and yes, the rumors are true – toasted-ravioli flavors, in addition to a black-truffle popcorn. Across the street at Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema, visitors to the concession stand can sprinkle their fresh popcorn with a positively obscene selection of powdered toppings.
And thinking conversely, as is his wont, Niche’s Gerard Craft has experimented with “popcorn consommé,” popcorn polenta, and popcorn puree, a sauce for chicken, on his menu.
Depending on your outlook, the flavors at the Chef’s Shoppe’s new popcorn dispensary may sound retro or delightfully new, but regardless, here’s hoping their boulders of molten chocolate shot through with veins of popcorn (and not the other way around) sell like Old Spice gift sets at Christmastime.
Chef’s Shoppe
2320 Troy Rd
Edwardsville, Ill.
618-659-9840
