Our 10 Favorite Food Moments from Broad City

I’ve always been enthralled by everything on Broad City, but especially the food. The show approaches food with playfulness and joy. Cakes are for faces and pizza is merely an unzipped dumpling. Food is fun and bizarre, colorful and integrated into all the gooey, surreal corners of our lives, and Broad City showcases that.

Season 4 of Broad City starts on September 13. If you, like me, are counting down the days, take a break and reflect on the 10 best food moments on Broad City. You might get some inspiration for your upcoming viewing night munchies.

A day of trying to be adults leads Abbi and Ilana straight to the candy aisle, where they stand starstruck in front of a wall of sweets. When Ilana bites into a jawbreaker, it makes good on its promise and pulls out her veneer. The hazards of chasing your mature conquests with everyone’s favorite elementary school dessert!

What’s the best way to tame the stress that comes from assuming your friend is a missing person? Two cakes followed by a cake-face smash, of course. “I was so worried that I baked a whole cake. And then I ate a whole cake,” Lincoln moans to Ilana. A second cake in the oven lures her to his place, where they video chat with Abbi so she can watch them faceplant into frosting.

“I’ve never been to a restaurant this nice. I’ve never even worked at a restaurant this nice,” Ilana says as they walk into Octavia. It’s the dream 26th birthday dinner: Amy Poehler is in the kitchen firing orders, Abbi and Ilana are seated at a table previously occupied by Beyonce and Jay Z, and Abbi’s dad has paid for a serious shellfish feast. Only about a bazillion courses in does Ilana confess that she’s allergic to shellfish, leading to an Epi-Pen stabbing and a chocolate lava cake to-go, eaten with two forks in an ER bed.

In the throes of a post-wisdom tooth removal weed smoothie (aka strega nona), Abbi stumbles to a Whole Foods, arm in arm with her suddenly life-sized Bingo Bronson stuffed animal. “It’s the most magical place in all the land: Whole Foods!” says Bingo. “Lets hurry up before the lines get long!” They load up their cart with hearts of palm, bulk granola, and manuka honey. Abbi gleefully knocks over a display of Earth-friendly cereals because Bingo insists that “they want to be on the ground.” Her trippy Whole Foods bender costs her $1,487.56.

Abbi sharpens her mind by systematically working her way through a bowl of Chex Mix. Step 1: Separate all of the bagel chips. Step 2: Crush them into a powder and snort them. Step 3: Head to the park to sell “Famous Favorites,” an art series featuring her interpretations of famous people’s favorite foods.

In a call-back to Abbi’s birthday dinner finale last year, Abbi arranges the ideal Ilana 23rd birthday evening. They head out for dumplings (or “a squirrel clutch with a meatball in it”), $12.99 wine, and a reservation made under “Lil Wayne.” Travesty of travesties, they’re seated next to awful college friends and have to escape their dinner and find a new plan. They end up outside, snuggled under a blanket, eating pizza which Ilana calls “a squirrel’s sleeping bag unzipped.”

Only Broad City could transform organic veggie shopping into a hotbed of mistaken identities, drama, and produce fondling. When Abbi impersonates Ilana to cover her co-op shift, she spends the day flirting with Craig (introduced with a slo-mo oat pour), twerking upside-down against a wall until bulk items fall over, and being reprimanded with the Phish lyric “Deduct the carrots from your pay, you worthless, swampy fool.” Their identity swap fails, and the stern co-op owner sentences them to “bodega veggies for the rest of [their] very short lives.”

After Ilana and Hymie pay an exterminator a whopping $400, they find a Larry and David gift basket in the hallway. “Olive oil, sea salt crackers, baklava!” Ilana announces, unpacking the basket. It becomes the backbone of a ticketed theme party to earn back the money they lost on the rat. This is Lincoln’s moment to shine, and after becoming “head chef” of the party, appetizers are passed on boob cake molds and skate boards. The night ends with a final rat sighting and a Frisbee of chilled chocolate-covered cherry slivers.

This montage of Abbi, Ilana, and Abbi’s dad (played by Tony Danza) dancing while plating scrambled eggs and pancakes in the kitchen is pure joy. After they cook, they sit in a pool of sunlight, surrounded by bright colors and grins, digging into their breakfasts. It’s all pretty idyllic, until a Will Smith reveal elicits a gigantic spit-take from Ilana.

They don’t wrap up Season 3 with the traditional birthday meal, but they do wrap up both Abbi and Ilana’s relationships over the course of a double dinner. Abbi races back and forth between dinner with Ilana’s family and a dinner with Trey. Each meal is full of perfect food moments: Ilana’s rapid-fire “pork chop, babe” order, Trey earnestly reciting every ingredient in the dish as he orders, and Abbi mumbling “I love chicken” through her hair as she orders from the same restaurant. Her plan to keep the dinners separate is foiled when Trey bounds across the room to save Ilana’s mom from a death-by-lychee-choking.