TL;DR
SpudBros turned the humble jacket potato into a TikTok sensation with three-hour queues, and the New York Times just asked why the English are losing their minds over baked potatoes.
MSM Perspective
The Guardian profiled the jacket potato renaissance with the headline 'we want to make jacket potatoes sexy again'; the NYT asked why the English wait hours for a baked spud.
X Perspective
British food TikTok is treating jacket potatoes as a cultural identity statement, with SpudBros videos pulling tens of millions of views.
The hottest food trend in England is a baked potato. Not a deconstructed potato foam with truffle oil. A potato. Baked. Split open. Filled with cheese and beans. The queue is three hours long.
SpudBros, two brothers from Preston, Lancashire, went nuclear on TikTok with videos of loaded jacket potatoes that now pull tens of millions of views. [1] They have expanded from a food truck to pop-up shops across England. The Guardian profiled the phenomenon in January under the headline: "We want to make jacket potatoes sexy again." [2] This week, the New York Times weighed in from across the Atlantic, genuinely bewildered: "What Are Jacket Potatoes, and Why Are the English Waiting Hours for Them?" [3]
The answer is that the jacket potato is the most British food imaginable — cheap, warm, unpretentious, and better than it has any right to be. Spudulike, the original chain, closed in 2024. Everyone assumed the jacket potato's moment had passed. Instead, two lads with a TikTok account and a sincere love of carbohydrates brought it back. No war. No politics. Just a potato.
-- CHARLES ASHFORD, London
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