Never Put Casino Butter On the Cast Iron.
The only newsletter that knows why casino butter doesn't go on the stone.
No this is not an April Fools’ newsletter. But if that is something you want to do before you jump into the hellscape of brand posts today (even the Canadian government is doing them in the only way a government knows how with the hashtag?), I suggest reading the 1985 Sports Illustrated baseball tale of Sidd Finch.
Now, the real story today is that a server at Black Rock Bar & Grill had one rule. One. You do not put the casino butter directly on the hot stone.
The video was originally posted by @verystupidfood on Instagram in December 2024.
It resurfaced on X this week and broke the internet in a way that’s hard to explain until you watch it.
The rule is delivered with all the energy of someone who has seen things. Then, immediately after the warning, she touches the butter to the stone and in the process ruins the steak.
Within 48 hours: The meme showed up anytime something was seemingly put on the stone. Moneyball characters were putting it on the stone. The angry Peloton instructor meme. A Blue Jays fan account posted an AI image with two dogs captioned “the jays put the casino butter directly on the stone tonight.”
Dear God, what the hell is Casino butter? Casino butter, if you’re really asking: softened butter, bacon, garlic and herbs. The compound used in Clams Casino. A real thing. A restaurant thing.
“Billy, this is Casino Butter. It’s next to our Rock Sauce, which is like a Zip Sauce. Its only defect is that this butter does not go directly on the stone.” (Moneyball Memes)
Mostly the reaction is a lot of posts like this, “This is great if you want your steak to be the same color of gray as ET when he’s dying.”
This is just how the internet works now. A server said a funny thing in 15 months ago and then in March the Internet decided it was the whole personality of the week.
Someone also stole 12 tonnes of KitKats.
That is roughly two elephants worth of chocolate bars, stolen somewhere in transit between a Nestlé factory in Central Italy and Poland. KitKat issued an official statement. Confirmed the theft. And reconfirmed this has nothing to do with April 1st shennanigans.
Noted supply was unaffected and consumer safety was fine. 129.6 million views. They now have a tracker so you can see if you are sold stolen KitKats.
Other brands, like vultures, descended immediately.
Domino’s UK: “On a completely unrelated note, we’re pleased to announce we’ll now be selling a new Kit Kat pizza.” 10 million views.
Then Airports got into it? Tampa International Airport and Dulles both posted the “our hearts go out to KitKat / in unrelated news” format within hours of each other. Dulles even generated an AI-rendered chocolate version of its own terminal.
DoorDash claimed a “completely random packaging error” had landed them 12 tonnes of KitKats they couldn’t sell — and included a CTA asking people to add 500-600 bars to their cart to resolve it. “For legal reasons, this is a joke.”
And if you think you should jump on to this trend, The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute just commented. So please do not.
Meanwhile, Polymarket opened a market on whether any stolen KitKats would be recovered by April 5. Current odds: 13% yes. Someone put real money on this. This is where we are.
Which brings us, neatly, to Kalshi — the federally regulated U.S. prediction market that spent this same week plastering Washington, D.C. with big green OOH ads listing their rules. Rule #1: We Ban Insider Trading. Rule #2: We Don’t Do Death Markets. Rule #4: We Operate Under U.S. Law.
Someone standing at a bus stop replied “if I was here I’d be like Jesus, how serious was rule number 1?”
The campaign is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do — positioning Kalshi against Polymarket without saying Polymarket’s name, in a week when Polymarket was literally taking bets on international candy theft.
The “we don’t do death markets” placement at a D.C. bus stop, a block from the Capitol, is genuinely inspired.
Two prediction markets. One week. One of them is betting on stolen KitKats. The other is explaining what death markets are and why they banned them.
If You Thought Casino Butter was Dumb, This is Real Stupid Food News
It was also a big week for food stunts, some of which are April Fools’ pre-launches and some of which are completely real and somehow harder to explain.
The New York Yankees are selling a Mini Dessert “Chicken” Bucket at home games this year. Drumstick-shaped ice cream, white chocolate coating, candied corn flakes, a cookie bone, served in a souvenir mini bucket that looks exactly like a fried chicken bucket.
The best detail: they put the word “chicken” in quotes in their own announcement. They know.
KFC Spain turned its restaurant signs into 12-metre-tall rotating kebab spits to promote a fried chicken döner kebab. They spin continuously. They resemble oversized rotisseries. Someone replied “because making something bigger always makes it do well.”
Top Ramen x Butterfinger is a real product with peanut buttery glaze and actual Butterfinger pieces in noodle soup. Buncha Crunch is launching a popcorn dispenser at movie concession stands that lets you select your “Crunch Level” — Low, Medium or Buncha.
Moosehead made a freeze-dried, zero-ABV version of their Canadian Lager called Space Beer to celebrate a Canadian astronaut mission. It’s available through their Instagram, which is a sentence I’m choosing to accept as normal. What are we even doing here?
One of these things is a prank. All of them feel like pranks. None of them are the prank.
In separate news: Ryan Reynolds has a Signature Maple Butter Glaze Donut at Tim Hortons. It launched this week. Someone immediately photographed a hair covering most of the display donuts at their local location. That’s all you need to know.
The Masters Website From 1996
My genuinely favourite thing this week was a screenshot of the 1996 Masters website. Player bios. Leaderboards. “Internet Technology” credited to IBM in the bottom footer. It looks exactly like a site that was built by people who had been told, firmly, that the internet was going to be important.
The Masters — an institution that to this day will not let you wear shorts inside the ropes — went online for the first time in 1996. The same year as the Macarena. You can feel the energy of every board meeting that led to that hunter green GeoCities page and the feedback to webmaster@masters.org.
The cocktail: The Casino
This is the drink Jack Tripper would have ordered at the Regal Beagle if Jack Tripper had any taste. Larry (in this case, a poorly AI'd version of me with Jack) would have made fun of him for it. Then Larry would have ordered one too.
The Casino is pre-Prohibition gin — maraschino, lemon, orange bitters — the kind of drink that existed before anyone decided cocktails needed to be complicated or ironic. It’s the drink your parents’ generation forgot about while they were busy drinking Tab and white wine spritzers. It deserved better.
It also deserves to be the drink of this particular week, because casino butter is named after Clams Casino, and there is a cocktail called the Casino, and sometimes The Drink Cart just hands you these things.
The Casino Recipe
2 oz London dry gin
1/4 oz maraschino liqueur
1/4 oz fresh lemon juice
2 dashes orange bitters
Lemon twist
Shake with ice and strain into a chilled coupe. Express the lemon twist and drop it in.
Bright, tart, slightly floral. Drier than an Aviation, more bitter, older. The kind of drink that would have felt right on a Friday night in Santa Monica, 1979, at a bar with good lighting and a bartender who didn’t need to explain anything.
Do remember, do not put the casino butter directly on the stone. Ever.
The Drink Cart. A newsletter version of sitting at a really good bar with someone who thinks too much about advertising and won’t shut up about it. Wednesdays and Fridays.
I kind of agree with that person that commented on the KFC Spain sign. If you make something really, really big, OR make it really, really small, it will do well.