Pretty in Pink: CNY restaurant owner lands spot on ‘Today’ show after Barbie sauce goes viral

Gino's Steak & Onion owner Josh Amidon serves a cheesesteak sandwich with Barbie sauce. (Charlie Miller | [email protected])

Fayetteville, N.Y. — Sandwich specials come and they go at Gino’s Steak & Onion in Fayetteville. Josh Amidon, the showy kimono-wearing owner of this sandwich store in a Fayetteville strip mall, changes the A-frame menu board each morning, and you can always count on a lively description of the day’s feature on the Gino’s Facebook page.

On Wednesday, it was an eggplant parm hoagie. The Chicken BLT Cheesesteak took the spotlight a few days before. Both sold quite well, we’re told. But it was the July 21 special that came and still hasn’t gone away.

A post showing off his Malibu Barbie Dream Drizzle became an instant hit. So much so that his social media post reached more than 11 million people as of Friday morning. That’s 10,853,897 more people than all of Syracuse’s metropolitan area. Among those was the food editor at NBC’s Today show. The morning news and entertainment show based in New York City assigned reporter Anna Kaplan to do a story on the pink dressing Amidon is squirting over his fries and popular cheesesteak subs.

“My goal is to get a cease-and-desist letter from Barbie herself. I mean, she probably was an attorney before she was president and after she was a marine biologist,” Amidon said Friday. “Seriously, I just wanted to have fun with this whole Barbie craze, but I never thought it would’ve blown up like this.“

Amidon is, by no means, the first food purveyor to cash in on Barbie Mania brought on by the film that’s so far grossed $775 million. Burger King has the BK Barbie Combo, a burger topped with a smokey pink sauce between a brioche bun. Cold Stone Creamery is pushing its All That Glitters Is Pink Creation, a cotton candy ice cream with dance-party sprinkles. Whole Foods Market is now making Barbie Pennette Rigate pasta meant to be covered in pink sauce (Chicken riggies?!).

Nearly every table in Gino’s 45-person-capacity dining room was occupied Friday shortly after opening at 11 a.m., and nearly every customer asked their meal to be dressed up with the enchanting pink sauce.

Cheesesteak sandwich with Barbie sauce at Gino's Steak & Onion in Fayetteville. (Charlie Miller | [email protected])

Amidon is not hiding the ingredients of this rose-colored condiment behind secrecy. Quite the opposite. He’ll tell anyone who asks that he starts with his slightly spicy ranch dressing made with garlic, chili peppers, a touch of lemon and other herbs. He now adds red dragon fruit, a subtly sweet cactus indigenous to southern Mexico. Not only does it cut the bite from the chilis, It turns the white sauce hot pink. To really Barbie it up, Amidon adds a pinch of edible pink glitter.

Pictures of good-looking sandwiches swimming in blush-tinted aioli garnered mixed reactions online. One keyboard warrior accused Amidon of drenching shaved steak in Pepto Bismol. Another said the sauce looked like “Klingon blood.” An overly aggressive critic called it a “culinary abomination created at Satan’s altar.” Some accused Amidon for stealing the pink sauce idea from TikTok videos.

“Really? I mean, seriously?” he said laughing. “Hunts sells ketchup. So does Heinz. They’re not the same. Apple didn’t invent the smartphone; they just made one that everyone wants.”

You can probably now say that about Amidon’s newest sauce. Since the July 21 menu board at Gino’s, the restaurant has gone through about 25 gallons of Malibu Barbie Dream Drizzle. On Saturday, a few hours after a story appeared on the Today show’s website, Amidon tore through 3 more gallons. He’ll appear on the show within the next few days.

Until he hears from the law offices of Malibu Barbie, Esq., Amidon and his staff here will continue churning out the pink sauce. And if Barbie does threaten legal action, Amidon said he would put her cease-and-desist order right next to the one from the Guinness brewery for listing the stout as an ingredient to Gino’s popular Reuben sandwich.

“Oh, I’d get a lovely pink frame for it,” he said. “It would be a great addition to my collection.”

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Charlie Miller finds the best in food, drink and fun across Central New York. Contact him at (315) 382-1984, or by email at [email protected]. (AND he pays for what he and his guests eat and drink, just so you know.) You can also find him under @HoosierCuse on Twitter and on Instagram. Sign up for his free weekly Where Syracuse Eats newsletter here.

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