His career has all the markings of spycraft.
Disguises. Deception. Dumpster diving for intel.
He even stalks his prey online.
“I’ll admit, I’ve told lies. I’ve told fibs to do what I do,” Todd Wilbur says. “But I’ve not done anything illegal.”
Instead of utilizing his very particular set of skills for corporate espionage or even regime change, Wilbur uses it for recipes.
“Hack That Dish,” the Las Vegan’s 13th book and first with Simon & Schuster, was released Tuesday. It’s a compilation of 101 copycat recipes for everything from the McGriddle and Butterfinger to dishes from Capital Grille, P.F. Chang’s and Maggiano’s Little Italy.
‘Vegas became the perfect place to do what I do’
It all started with a hoax.
In 1987, a chain letter — the precursor to viral videos — claimed to reveal the secret recipe behind Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookies.
Wilbur was a commodities broker in Newport Beach, California, at the time. Out of curiosity, he attempted the recipe, but its proportions were all out of whack. Something inside him clicked, though, and he started trying to figure out the real recipe.
The only problem? He had no experience in the kitchen.
“Just as a kid with my mom making cookies, that kinda thing. Very casual. No professional training of any sort,” he says. “That’s why the first book took me five years to write, and it’s not even a thick book. It’s almost like a pamphlet. It’s, like, 42 recipes. But I had to teach myself how to cook.”
Wilbur soon found himself sitting down with a who’s who of ’90s tastemakers: Oprah, Regis and Kathie Lee, Maury Povich, Sally Jesse Raphael and even MTV News.
After his third book was published in 1997, Wilbur left Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he’d moved to work at a TV station, for the Las Vegas Valley’s warmer weather and proliferation of chain restaurants.
“Vegas became the perfect place to do what I do,” he says.
After all, we’re the only city in the country with the regional chains In-N-Out Burger, Shake Shack, Whataburger, Steak ’n Shake and Habit Burger & Grill. Las Vegas also collects chicken fingers-and-Texas toast chains like they’re Infinity Stones, having amassed Raising Cane’s, Zaxby’s, Slim Chickens, Guthrie’s and Huey Magoo’s.
“It’s really amazing how they’re just coming to us, all these chains,” Wilbur notes.
Restaurants don’t seem to mind
He averages about one recipe a week, which usually requires two trips to the target restaurant. Wilbur gets the dish to go, deconstructed, with all sauces and toppings on the side so the flavors don’t mingle.
“You go through a mental checklist of the possibilities that could be in a dish,” he explains, “and then you taste for those things.”
Research is the most important step, though.
That can include asking questions of servers and looking at ingredient lists, especially on packaged products where they’re printed in descending order of weight. He’s pretended to have food allergies, and he’s claimed his wife is pregnant and needs to know what’s in her food.
“I’ll stalk the brands also,” Wilbur says, noting that he’ll dissect social media videos posted from restaurant kitchens searching for clues.
Take Cafe du Monde, the legendary New Orleans purveyor of beignets.
“It’s, like, a 146-year-old recipe,” Wilbur says, “but all the recipes on the internet are made with evaporated milk, which did not exist when that recipe was created.”
His hunch that the real recipe calls for whole milk was confirmed when he spotted a carton of it in the background of a Cafe du Monde social media video.
Some recipes are easier to crack than others. The malasadas from Leonard’s Bakery in Hawaii took him 93 tries. He recently cracked the recipe for Zippy’s chili, though, in just three batches.
In addition to the books, Wilbur sells his recipes for 79 cents each at topsecretrecipes.com. A $2.99 monthly membership fee includes eight recipes each month.
Surprisingly, Wilbur says he’s had no trouble from the restaurants whose recipes he’s hacked. Some, he says, even see his content as a form of publicity.
“I think they realize that making stuff at home is not competition for what they do, which is convenience food,” Wilbur says. “You go to these places when you don’t feel like cooking. So, just because you can make this stuff at home, (it) doesn’t mean you’re never gonna go to the drive-thru at KFC or order a Domino’s pizza.”
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.
Applebee’s Chicken Wonton Tacos
Prep time: active 50 minutes, inactive 1 hour
Difficulty: medium
Serves: 4 as an appetizer (8 tacos)
For coleslaw:
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
½ teaspoon lemon juice
1⁄ 16 teaspoon salt
4 cups thinly sliced green cabbage
¼ cup shredded carrot
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro
For dumpling sauce:
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon sesame oil
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper
For crispy wonton shells:
8 (3″-4″) wonton wrappers
Oil for frying
For chicken:
2 skinless chicken thigh fillets
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
½ teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup sweet chili sauce
For garnish:
1 teaspoon minced fresh cilantro
8 lime wedges
Recipe steps:
1. To make coleslaw: Whisk together mayonnaise, sugar, vinegar, lemon juice and salt in a large bowl until sugar has mostly dissolved. Add cabbage, carrot and cilantro; toss well, then cover and chill for at least 1 hour. Allowing it to chill for several hours or overnight is even better.
2. To make dumpling sauce: Stir cornstarch into water in a small saucepan. Add remaining ingredients and place over medium heat. When sauce starts to bubble, lower heat and let it simmer for 1 minute before turning off heat and covering until needed.
3. Prepare crispy wonton shells by heating 1 inch of oil in a skillet over medium heat. Once oil is hot, add a wonton wrapper and let it cook until it blisters, which should take only 1-2 seconds.
4. Flip wrapper and cook for another 1-2 seconds. Then use tongs to grab a corner of wrapper and bend it diagonally in half, holding it in that position for 5-10 seconds until side in oil turns golden brown. It can be helpful to use another pair of tongs or another utensil to keep wonton wrapper steady with one hand while you fold it with the other. Flip wrapper to cook other side for an additional 5-10 seconds until it is golden brown while continuing to hold wonton open with tongs so that there is about 1 inche of space between sides of shell for filling.
5. To make chicken: Preheat grill to high. Rub chicken thighs with oil and cook for 4-6 minutes per side until they reach an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Let chicken cool 5 minutes, then dice.
6. When you’re ready to build tacos, heat 2 teaspoons of oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add diced chicken to pan and season it with paprika and salt. Cook for 1 minute to heat chicken thoroughly, then add sweet chili sauce to pan. Cook for 30 seconds while stirring to coat chicken with sauce, then turn off heat.
7. Spoon diced chicken into wonton shells and top with coleslaw. Drizzle each taco with dumpling sauce, sprinkle minced cilantro over plate and serve with lime wedges on side.
An excerpt from “Hack That Dish” by Todd Wilbur. Published by Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
Cookie caper
Longtime Review-Journal readers may remember Todd Wilbur as the man behind “The Great Cookie Cover-up of 2013.”
The chocolate chip cookies at Red Velvet Cafe were a local sensation. With labels touting each delicious treat as containing just 27 calories, fans would scarf down an entire six-pack in one sitting.
“I had friends who were eating these cookies on a daily basis and were getting huge,” Wilbur recalls.
After examining them, he sent them off to a food analyst on his own dime. When the report came back that the cookies averaged 157 calories each, Wilbur shared the findings with the Review-Journal. Jane Ann Morrison’s four columns on the scandal were the talk of the valley that summer.
The Red Velvet Cafe, which marketed itself to vegans and vegetarians and had three locations, didn’t survive the bad publicity.
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