A Guy Put Mayo in His Coffee and People Are All Stirred Up About It

It takes a lot for a food (or food combo) to gross me out. Pineapple on pizza? A revelation. Fishy pickled things? I’m all in. Smelly French cheese? Sign me up. But even as adventurous as I am, I have my limitations when it comes to mayo.  I don’t know why mayo has such a distinct ick factor in certain contexts. But I firmly believe there are some applications of the eggy, oil-based condiment that simply should not exist. And one such context popped up on Twitter just this week: Coffee. Mayo in coffee?! *shivers*

Here’s the story: In 2021, University of Kentucky quarterback Will Levis was being interviewed by Kentucky Sports Radio (presumably about sports) when he admitted to putting mayo in his coffee. Apparently, this started when his girlfriend was wondering why there was mayo on the table at a breakfast restaurant, and joked that maybe people put it in their coffee. Levis took that as a serious suggestion, tried it out, and hasn’t looked back since. 

Then just last week, CBS Sports tweeted a video of Levis squirting some mayo into his coffee, and actually drinking the concoction. Let’s just say Twitter was less than thrilled. A lot of people responded to the tweet to say something along the lines of, “That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever seen and I actually like both mayo and coffee.” Others commented something like, “Guess I won’t be betting on Kentucky this year!” (Which is harsh, but I mean… mayo? In coffee?) And someone else commented, “WHYYYYYYY?” (That someone was me out loud while watching the video.)

After the initial disgust, I moved on to the rationalization phase, desperately trying to come up with comparable combinations that could make this mayo macchiato make sense. I thought, mayo is made of eggs, oil, and salt, right? Then I looked into it further and realized mayo is actually made with egg yolks. This helped, because you know what else is made of egg yolks? Puddings, custards, Crème Anglaise, and a whole mess of other creamy desserts. Maybe this dude is actually a genius putting salty custard in his coffee.

Apparently people all over the world do put salt in their coffee to make it less bitter. A lot of people put cream in their coffee for the same reason. Custard is like cream, and mayo is like custard, so…did this bro from Kentucky just invent the world’s least bitter coffee? I’m not saying I’m in any rush to try this, but I feel that now I have at least talked myself out of thinking it is unforgivably gross. That said, I think I’ll stick to my mayo-free vanilla latte for now.