Robert Pattinson's Pasta

Submission 4,012

Part of a series on Robert Pattinson. [View Related Entries]

About

Robert Pattinson's Pasta refers to jokes and memes made about the actor Robert Pattinson's various pasta recipes in a profile for GQ magazine. During the interview, Pattinson admits to Googling how to microwave pasta and shares a recipe for a handheld pasta called "Piccolini Cuscino."

Origin

On May 12th, 2020, GQ^[1] published a profile with actor Robert Pattinson, focusing on his experience with the coronavirus quarantine. During the interview, he claims to have search YouTube for "how to make microwave pasta." GQ published:

Pattinson: Yesterday I was just googling, I was going on YouTube to see how to microwave pasta. [laughs]

GQ: That’s not a thing.

Pattinson: Put it in a bowl and microwave it. That is how to microwave pasta. And also it really, really isn’t a thing. It’s really actually quite revolting. But I mean, who would have thought that it actually makes it taste disgusting?

Additionally, in the interview, Pattinson divulges that he attempted to trademark a handheld pasta called "Piccolini."

Last year, he says, he had a business idea. What if, he said to himself, “pasta really had the same kind of fast-food credentials as burgers and pizzas? I was trying to figure out how to capitalize in this area of the market, and I was trying to think: How do you make a pasta which you can hold in your hand?”

[…]

Pattinson says, he conceived of a brand name for his product, a soft little moniker that kind of summed up what he thought his pasta creation looked like: Piccolini Cuscino. Little Pillow. He thought he’d give the product another go, with me now: “Maybe if I say it in GQ, maybe, like, a partner will just come along.”

The magazine included a recipe for the dish:

One (1) giant, filthy, dust-covered box of cornflakes. (“I went to the shop, and they didn’t sell breadcrumbs. I’m like, ‘Oh, fuck it! I’m just getting cornflakes. That’s basically the same shit.’ ”)

One (1) incredibly large novelty lighter. (“I always liked the idea of doing a little flambé, like the brand name, with kind of burnt ends at the top.”)

Nine (9) packs of presliced cheese. (“I got, like, nine packs of presliced cheese.”)

Sauce. (Like a tomato sauce? “Just any sauce.”)

Read Full Recipe

Nevertheless, penne and water in the microwave for eight minutes. In the meantime, he takes the foil and he begins dumping sugar on top of it. “I found after a lot of experimentation that you really need to congeal everything in an enormous amount of sugar and cheese.” So after the sugar, he opens his first package of cheese and begins layering slice after slice onto the sugar-foil. Then more sugar: “It really needs a sugar crust.”

Then he realizes that he’s forgotten the outer layer, which is supposed to be breadcrumbs but today will be crushed-up cornflakes, and so he lifts the pile of cheese and sugar and crumbles some cornflakes onto the aluminum foil before placing the sugar-cheese back on top of it. Then he adds sauce, which is red. The microwave dings, and Pattinson promptly burns himself on the bowl of pasta. He sighs, heavily, looking at it. “No idea if it’s cooked or not.” He dumps the pasta in anyway. At this point, his spirits have visibly begun to flag. “I mean, there’s absolutely no chance this is gonna work. Absolutely none.”

The little pillow now mostly built, he pours more sugar on top of it and then produces the top half of a bun, which he hollows out, places it on top of the rest of whatever the hell this thing is, and…begins burning the top of the bun with the giant novelty lighter. “I’m just gonna do the initials.…”

“You look like you’re cooking meth,” I say, because he does.

“I’m really trying to sell this company. I’m doing this for my brand.”

At this point, he accidentally ignites one of his latex gloves, which promptly melts onto his palm. He yells in pain. Then he gingerly holds up the finished product: some approximation of a P, followed by a C, for Piccolini Cuscino, burned into the top of a hamburger bun.

He starts wrapping the whole thing up with more aluminum foil, and then compacts it, and then wraps it some more, and then squeezes it again. Suddenly he stops: “Can you actually put foil in an oven?”

I say yes, you can, but what you absolutely cannot do is put foil in a microwave. And he says cool, cool, and then he goes looking for his oven, which he’s never used before, and this is a nice house, so there are multiple options, and the one he settles on, well: It looks like another microwave to me. He assures me it is not.

“I reckon probably…10 minutes?”

He puts the aluminum sphere, the little pillow, into what he thinks is an oven and I think is a microwave. He attempts to turn it on. “I actually knew how to do this before,” he tells me. “I literally did this yesterday. And now it’s just impossible. It’s going to look like I can’t cook at all.”

He fumbles at some more buttons. “Oh, oh, oh,” he says, excitedly now. “A thousand watts, there you go.”

Proudly he is walking back toward the counter that his phone is on when, behind him, a lightning bolt erupts from the oven/microwave, and Pattinson ducks like someone outside has opened fire. He’s giggling and crouching as the oven throws off stray flickers of light and sound.

“The fucking electricity…oh, my God,” he says, still on the floor. And then, with a loud, final bang, the oven/microwave goes dark.

Spread

That day, people began posting jokes about the recipe. For example, Twitter ^[2] user @soalexgoes tweeted a low-angle photo of Pattinson with the caption "pov: you're a bowl of pasta about to go into a microwave." The post received more than 51,000 likes and 5,100 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, left).

Twitter^[6] user @ephwinslow tweeted, "Robert Pattinson attempting to demonstrate his 'fast food version' of pasta to a GQ reporter is peak comedy, I think." The tweet received more than 82,000 likes and 19,000 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).

In addition to jokes, some posted their attempts at making Pattinson's pasta. Twitter^[3] user @treytylor posted an attempt, which received more than 420 likes in less than 24 hours, as did @Tormny_Pickeals,^[4] who received more than 160 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below, left and right, respectively).

The following day, The Guardian^[5] published one writer's attempt to make the dish. Max Benwell, the author, published a video of the attempt on Twitter (shown below).

Several other outlets covered the pasta, including Rolling Stone,^[7] The Daily Dot, ^[8] The New York Post^[9] and more.

some exclusive content for my Twitter followers: a BTS look at how this monstrosity got made, with camerawork by my housemate Taimei and editing magic by @TomSilverstone pic.twitter.com/QWp84aFFoS

— Max Benwell (@Max_Benwell) May 13, 2020